2020 has been a roller coaster for Bob Iger. The ex-CEO of The Walt Disney Company ($DIS) announced his departure in late February, but is now the de-facto CEO again. Instead of running the company in the shadows, he gladly stepped back into the role to assist Bob Chapek, his successor. There are a lot of titles being thrown around — Chairman, President, Executive something or other — but at the end of the day, Iger is back to steer the ship.
“A crisis of this magnitude and its impact on Disney would necessarily result in my actively helping Bob [Chapek] and the company contend with it, particularly since I ran the company for 15 years,” - Bob Iger, to the New York Times
Bob Iger will forgo his salary during this period, which is noble for someone who is already filthy rich beyond comprehension. That might be a drop in the bucket since Disney is set to lose $30 million a day, resulting in around $3 billion in revenue loss this year. While this isn't great news, it's worth remembering that Disney made $26 billion in profit last year alone.
Disney gets most of its income through cruise lines, theme parks, and movies. And as we all know, people won't be gathering on cruise ships or at theme parks or movie theatres afor at least another six months. Although it's only been about a few weeks since the world went on pause, the news has sent the stock down. Not quite a tailspin, but still down.
43,000 employees were furloughed last week, and there were pay cuts to top execs. One of those things is a band-aid and the other is 43,000 people losing their jobs for an extended period of time. As a result, Disney job listings have dropped 69%.
The one bit of good news in all of this data is Disney+, which is now just a virtual movie theater for new releases. After five months, the streaming service has hit 50 million subscribers. Its Twitter following has literally doubled in that time, increasing by 100% on the dot.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
Further Reading:
- Companies battling Coronavirus take drastic steps to save millions of lives worldwide
- Apple slows global hiring after more than a year of steady growth
- Uber hiring plummets amid sharing economy downturn