Good day and welcome to the Walt Disney Company's second quarter, 2023 Financial Results Conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signify conference specialists by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note the event is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Alexia Quadrone, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. It's my pleasure to welcome everybody to the Walt Disney Company's second quarter, 2023 earnings call. Our press release was issued about 25 minutes ago and is available on our website at www.disney.com forward slash investors. Today's call is being webcast and the replay and transcript will also be made available on our website.
Joining me for today's call are Bob Eiger, Disney's Chief Executive Officer and Christine McCarthy, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following comments from Bob and Christine, it will be happy to take some of your questions. So with that, let me turn the call over to Bob to get started.
Thank you, Alexia and good afternoon everyone. Allow me to digress for a moment to congratulate Universal for the tremendous success of Super Mario Brothers. It certainly proves people love to be entertained in theaters around the world and it gives us reason to be optimistic about the movie business.
Now turning to our results. We're pleased with our accomplishments this quarter which are reflective of the strategic changes we've been making throughout our businesses. We're also proud of what we continued to deliver for consumers, from movies, to television, to sports news and our theme parks. A few recent highlights include Marvel Studios Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 which topped the global box office in its opening weekend with $289 million. The first round of the NBA playoffs was the most watched ever across Disney networks and we've been averaging 5 million viewers throughout the first 22 games up 15% versus the comparable point in last year's playoffs. ABC continued its run as the number one entertainment broadcast network for the fourth consecutive season and at our domestic parks we continued to improve the guest experience with our recent pricing changes and exciting new attractions including the reimagined Mickey's Tuntown at Disneyland and Tron Light Cycle Run at Walt Disney World.
现在,让我们来看看我们的成果。我们对这一季度的成绩感到满意,这反映了我们在各个业务领域进行的战略变革。我们也为我们为消费者持续提供的影片、电视节目、体育新闻和主题公园感到自豪。最近的几个亮点包括《漫威漫画守护者们3》在其首个周末以2.89亿美元的全球票房成为冠军;Disney网络播出的 NBA 季后赛首轮是历史上最受关注的,前 22 场比赛的平均观众人数为 500 万,比去年同期增长了 15%;ABC 电视台以第四个连续赛季成为最受欢迎的娱乐广播电视网络;我们的国内公园继续通过最新的定价策略和令人兴奋的新景点(包括在迪斯尼乐园重新设计的米老鼠小镇和在华特迪士尼世界推出的魔幻快轮)提高来宾的体验。
I've been back at the company for almost six months and in that time we've embarked on a significant transformation to strategically realign Disney for sustained growth and success. And please to say that the strategy we detailed last quarter is working. Our new organizational structure is returning authority and accountability to our creative leaders as well as allowing for a more efficient, coordinated and streamlined approach to our operations. The cost cutting initiatives are announced last quarter are well underway and we are on track to meet or exceed our target of $5.5 billion. We're delivering progress on the number of fronts including a reduction in streaming operating losses this quarter and I'm very optimistic about our direct to consumer business longer term.
Combined our brands, franchises and robust library are a significant differentiator in the space and the meteoric subscriber growth we've seen since our launch three years ago only further reinforces that. As I think about our path forward in streaming we have a number of clear opportunities to further position our DTC business for success. First, as a significant step toward creating a growth business I'm pleased to announce that we will soon begin offering a one app experience domestically that incorporates our Hulu content via Disney Plus. While we continue to offer Disney Plus Hulu and ESPN Plus as standalone options this is a logical progression of our DTC offerings that will provide greater opportunities for advertisers while giving bundle subscribers access to more robust and streamlined content resulting in greater audience engagement and ultimately leading to a more unified streaming experience.
We will begin to roll out this one app offering by the end of the calendar year and we look forward to sharing more details in the future.
我们将在本年度结束前开始推出这个单一应用程序,并期待将来分享更多细节。
Despite the near term macro headwinds of the overall marketplace today the advertising potential of this combined platform is incredibly exciting and when you drill down into the details you can see why. Over 40% of our domestic advertising portfolio is addressable including streaming which we expect will continue to grow over time. We're also focused on the growth opportunity in programmatic advertising and we are well positioned to scale as the market improves and audiences continue to grow. We've added more than 1000 advertisers over the past year and now have 5000 advertisers across our streaming platforms with over a third buying advertising programmatically today. In addition we plan to launch our Ed Tier on Disney Plus in Europe by the end of this calendar year which will drive both increased inventory and revenue over the long term.
The truth is we have only just begun to scratch the surface of what we can do with advertising on Disney Plus and I'm incredibly bullish on our longer term advertising positioning. Meanwhile the pricing changes we've already implemented have proven successful and we plan to set a higher price for our Ed free tier later this year to better reflect the value of our content offerings. As we look to the future we will continue optimizing our pricing model to reward loyalty and reduce churn to increase subscriber revenue for the premium Ed free tier and drive growth of subscribers who opt for the lower cost Ed supported option.
Additionally I like to share a few other key areas where we see opportunities for improvements in our streaming business. First it's critical we rationalize the volume of content we're creating and what we're spending to produce our content. Second our legacy platforms enable us to expand our audiences and often augment our potential streaming success while at the same time allowing us to amortize our content costs across multiple windows. We also need to strike the right balance between our local and global programming as well as our platform and program marketing. Finally we must continue calibrating our investments in specific markets looking at the total addressable market and our food prospects and evaluating the profitability potential. All of these factors combined are why we are confident that we're on the right path for streaming long term profitability.
The strength of our content the one app experience and the enormous advertising potential that comes with it. Rationalizing the volume of the content we make and what we're spending. Maximizing windowing opportunities. Re-calibrating our investments internationally. Perfecting our pricing model and consolidating our global streaming business under the leadership of Disney Entertainment, Co-chairman Alan Bergman and Dana Walden.
We're doing the essential work now to position our streaming business for sustained growth and success in the future.
我们正在进行必要的工作,以确保我们的流媒体业务在未来能够持续增长和取得成功。
Turning to our parks we see this business as a key growth driver for the company. This past quarter we've been especially pleased with the performance of our parks internationally. We have several international expansions underway that will allow our parks to continue to build capacity and drive longer term growth. At Disneyland Powers our Avengers campus has been a resounding success in its first year. And we have ongoing investment underway there including a frozen inspired land currently in development. Our Zootopia inspired expansion opens later this year at Shanghai Disney Resort. Irondale, the world of frozen expansion is set to open at Hong Kong Disneyland in the second half of 2023. And Tokyo Disney Resort, which is currently celebrating its 4th anniversary, will be opening the new frozen kingdom, Rapunzel's forest, and Peter Pan's Neverland in the coming year.
Regarding our domestic parks we just announced additional changes coming in 2024 that will improve the experience for guests visiting Walt Disney World, including further expanding access for annual pass holders to visit on certain days without reservations, as well as removing the need for an additional reservation for guests with date-based tickets. This is just another example of how we're continuously listening to our guests in finding ways to improve their experiences. And we have a number of other growth and expansion opportunities at our parks and we're closely evaluating where it makes the most sense to direct future investments.
From the very beginning 100 years ago our timeless stories and characters have been the key to our success and hold a special place in the hearts of generations of fans and families.
We're leaning into this across every segment of our business as illustrated with our strong summer slate of the Aschko releases including Disney's The Little Mermaid, Pixar's Elemental, and Lucasfilm's Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny.
As we've been looking at the structure of the company these past several months, what's become clear is that there is an enormous opportunity to harness our full potential by increasing alignment and coordination in marketing across our businesses. That's why I named Assad Ayaz our first ever chief brand officer in addition to his role as president of marketing for our studios.
For years our businesses have been incredibly successful in marketing our content, experiences and products and now with greater integration of our touch points with consumers, especially streaming, we're able to be more efficient and more successful in reaching the right audiences with the right offerings from across our businesses.
Disney means so much to so many people around the world. That's a privilege we take seriously and I know I speak for our terrific chairman, Alan, Dana, Jimmy and Josh, when I say that our goal is to continue finding innovative new ways that allow guests and audiences to have even deeper connections with us and that's why I'm so thrilled to be taking this more proactive approach to our brand and marketing work.
Thanks Bob and good afternoon everyone. Having certain items, fiscal second quarter, diluted earnings per share were 93 cents, a decrease of 15 cents versus the prior year, as improvements at DPEP and direct to consumer were more than offset by declines at our linear networks business.
As Bob mentioned, we are making excellent progress on our cost cutting initiatives and are on track to meet or exceed the efficiency targets we outlined last quarter. Thank you too, we took a restructuring charge of approximately $150 million, primarily related to severance. While we are continuing to refine our estimates, we currently expect to record additional severance charges of approximately $180 million over the remainder of this fiscal year, with a bulk of that additional charge expected in the third quarter.
We are in the process of reviewing the content on our DTC services to align with the strategic changes in our approach to content curation that you've heard Bob discuss. As a result, we will be removing certain content from our streaming platforms and currently expect to take an impairment charge of approximately $1.5 to $1.8 billion. The charge, which will not be recorded in our segment results, will primarily be recognized in the third quarter as we complete our review and remove the content. And going forward, we intend to produce lower volumes of content in alignment with this strategic shift.
Now, to dive into our quarterly results by segment. Starting with our media and entertainment distribution business, a year over year decline in operating income was driven primarily by a $1 billion decrease at linear networks. DTC results improved versus the prior year and content sales licensing and other operating results in the second quarter declined modestly.
At linear networks, results were consistent with guidance given last quarter, driven by decreases of approximately $800 million at our domestic linear networks and $160 million at our international linear networks. Domestic results decreased at both cable and broadcasting. At cable, this was largely due to higher sports programming and production costs, which were driven by the timing of costs for the college football playoffs and the NFL we discussed last quarter.
In addition to NBA contractual rate increases and higher sports production costs, lower broadcasting results reflected decreases in advertising revenue across the ABC network and our own television stations. Second quarter domestic linear network affiliate revenue decreased by 2% from the prior year, driven by a 6-point decline from fewer subscribers partially offset by 3 points of growth from contractual rate increases.
Rate growth was adversely impacted by 1 percentage point from the timing of revenue recognition from certain non-owned TV stations. Second quarter domestic linear advertising revenue declined 10% year over year, although ESPN ad revenue was up 2% or flat when adjusted for certain non-comparable items, including CFP timing.
The sports advertising marketplace is currently stable, with quarter to date ESPN domestic linear cash ad sales pacing up. However, the overall entertainment advertising marketplace has been challenging. All the weakness has moderated somewhat, we anticipate that some softness may continue into the back half of the fiscal year.
But as Bob mentioned, we are optimistic about our ability to continue to be a leader in advertising throughout the business cycle, particularly as it relates to our capabilities in addressable and programmatic. And we look forward to sharing more details at our upfront presentation next week.
Social channels operating income decreased versus the prior year, driven by lower advertising revenue partially offset by lower programming costs.
与前一年相比,社交渠道的营收有所下降,主要是由于广告收入减少,但部分抵消了较低的编程成本。
Moving on to the director consumer, operating losses improved sequentially by approximately $400 million versus Q1. During the second quarter, Disney plus core subscribers grew modestly with over 600,000 net additions. More international subs increased by close to 1 million. While domestic subs declined slightly in the quarter from continued impacts from the price increase, domestic RPU increased sequentially by 20%, reflecting strong on subscription revenue growth. And while the softness we saw in Q2 domestic Disney plus net ads may linger into Q3, we do expect core sub growth to rebound in Q4.
At ESPN plus in Hulu, subscribers increased slightly over the prior quarter. Our Poo at Hulu was impacted by lower per subscriber advertising revenue in line with the comments we made last quarter regarding near-term softness in the addressable advertising space. GTC expenses, including programming and production costs, and SGNA declined in the second quarter versus Q1.
Our director consumer operating results in Q2 outperformed our guidance by about $200 million due in part to timing shifts of marketing expenses driven by recent slate changes at Disney plus in Hulu. The shift of some of those costs into the third quarter will contribute to Q3 DTC operating losses widening by approximately $100 million versus Q2. As we have noted before, the path will not be linear. As the strategic changes and improvements we're executing on take time to deliver. But we remain confident in our long-term trajectory, with continued opportunities to further improve results given our content, duration strategy, planned price increases, expanding our relationships with our advertisers, and our ongoing discipline approach to costs.
At content sales licensing another, we generated a $50 million loss in the quarter, bit shy of our prior guidance that results would be roughly break even. Lower results in the second quarter versus the prior year were due to a decrease in TBS-LOD distribution results, partially offset by improved theatrical distribution results due to the continued success of Avatar, the way of water. In the fiscal third quarter, we anticipate this business's operating results will decline by $150 to $200 million versus a prior year, driven primarily by timing of the marketing of theatrical releases with key titles, elemental, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, not premiering until very late in the quarter.
Moving on to parks, experiences, and products, operating income increased by over 20% versus the prior year to $2.2 billion, with increases at both international and domestic parks and experiences, partially offset by lower merchandise licensing results at consumer products.
Our international parks were a bright spot this quarter, with strong year-over-year operating income growth driven by higher attendance and improved financial results as Shanghai Disney Resort, Disneyland Paris, and Hong Kong Disneyland Resort.
At domestic parks and experiences, operating income increased 10% versus the prior year, driven primarily by the continued post-pandemic recovery of our cruise line, partially offset by a comparison to a gain from a real estate sale in the prior year. Due to domestic parks operating income came in slightly below the prior year, but was still up over 50% versus 2019. Results generally reflect the cost pressures we cited in last quarter's earnings call, including wage increases, costs associated with new guest offerings, and other inflationary cost impacts.
Public year-over-year increases in attendance and per capita spending were 7% and 2% respectively. Per capita growth was more moderate this quarter, as we are comparing against the first full quarter of offering Genie Plus and Lightning Lane at both parks in the prior year. Domestic parks and experiences operating margins were comparable to the prior year, one suggested for the impact of the prior year's real estate sale.
Please keep in mind that in the back half of this fiscal year there will be an unfavorable comparison against the prior year's incredibly successful 50th anniversary celebration at Walt Disney World. We typically see some moderation in demand as we lap these types of events, and third quarter-day performance has been in line with those historical trends.
This comparison coupled with inflationary cost pressures, including from a new union agreement, is expected to drive a modest adverse impact to domestic parks and experiences operating margins in the third quarter compared to the prior year. However, we expect the contribution from continued strong performance at our international parks in Q3 to result in de-pept segment-level operating margins that are slightly higher than the prior year. De-pept will continue to be a growth business for our company, and we will manage all of these factors in line with our enduring focus on our guests.
Before we conclude, I would like to note a couple of items related to our expectations for the total company this year. For fiscal 2023, cash content spend company-wide is expected to remain roughly comparable to last year, excluding any potential impacts from the Ryder strike. And we expect that fiscal 2023 capital expenditures will total approximately $5.6 billion. This is lower than our prior guide of $6 billion, largely due to timing of projects at de-pept, as well as lower technology spend at de-med. We still expect fiscal 2023 revenue and operating income to grow in the high single-digit percent of range.
There are still many moving pieces, including macroeconomic factors, the state of the global advertising market, and content timing shifts, which could impact our plans and expectations for the back half of this year. But as Bob mentioned earlier, we are incredibly optimistic about the long-term value creation opportunities that the changes we are currently executing on can generate for our company, and we look forward to keeping you updated on our progress. And with that, I will turn the call over to Alexia for Q&A.
Thanks, Christine. As we transition to Q&A, we ask you to please try to limit yourself to one question in order to help us get as many analysis possible today. And with that operator, we're ready for the first question. We will now begin the question and answer session.
To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speaker phone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two.
Our first question will come from Ben Flynnborn of Morgan Stanley. Thank you. Good afternoon. Bob, I wanted to ask you about what you learned on sort of two topics over the last several months. One is around the price increase on Disney+. You've sort of commented that you think it went well. Obviously, we can see the subscriber trends. And you sound optimistic that the company can continue to drive our pullover times. You just talk a little bit about what you've seen in the customer base and reaction and engagement that gives you confidence around pricing power for Disney plus looking ahead.
And then a similar question around the cost rationalization and reorg at the company now that you're deep into that. What have you learned about the opportunity for that to drive better financial results for the company? And Christine sort of teased it that there might be more opportunities that may be exceed expectations. But do you think there's more to do, I guess, is the short question on the cost side. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Ben. On the first question regarding price increases first, we were pleasantly surprised that the loss of subs due to what was a substantial increase in pricing for the non-ad supported Disney plus product was de minimis. It was some loss, but it was relatively small. That leads us to believe that we impact have pricing elasticity. With that in mind, I think one of the things that we not only have discovered, but that we believe we have to do is that we've got to widen the delta between the ad free service and the non-ad supported service.
Because we clearly would like to drive more subs to the ad supported service, which we did in the quarter, by the way. The obvious reason, because of the R-Poo potential of the ad service, Disney plus. In fact, as we look to this upfront, and after careful and considerable discussion with our sales team led by Rita Farrow, we see that there's going to be a substantial growth in digital advertising in this upfront, quite substantial, suggesting for the obvious reason because digital advertising is so attractive to advertisers that there's an opportunity for us to really lean into ad supported. Again, raising our prices on the ad free, keeping the prices on the ad supported relatively modest, maybe perhaps no increases, increasing the delta driving more subs in a higher R-Poo direction.
We're heartened by it, and we're optimistic. That is one of the strategies that we believe will help lead us ultimately to profitability and growth. Along with the second thing that you mentioned, which is the cost rationalization, and I'll tag team with Christine on this.
Clearly, as she mentioned, we're on a path to meeting or exceeding the 5.5 billion in cost reductions that we mentioned last quarter. That comes in two categories, content spend and S-GNA. I'm going to let Christine handle the S-GNA, but on the content spend, we said at the time, most of that will come starting in 24 and leading into 25 because we were committed to so much content already in 23.
I'll let Christine handle the timing of the S-GNA reductions and what potential impact that would have. Clearly, again, the price increases. Pushing more viewers, more subscribers to the ad supported and the cost containment are among the things we're doing to get the profitability.
Yeah, hi, Ben. I'll just further elaborate on some of the S-GNA progress that we've had. Thanks for picking up that. I did tease that by saying that we would need to receive our targets of 2.5 billion. As we've gotten into this, this has been great cooperation throughout the entire company, which has been really rewarding because we're looking at this.
Of course, there's the reality of headcount reductions and we're going through those. There's also other things that we're finding more and more opportunities on eliminating redundancies, looking at ways to become more effective by utilizing resources, people and other resources across other businesses. But we're really leaning into all the opportunities.
There's technology, which we've also seen a lot of good progress. Some of it will be, and I say some, will be realized in the balance of this year, really at the end of the fiscal year. But the real impact is going to help us in 24. But once again, since we're all into it, I think once again, having it be company-wide and having, you know, it be something that all of our business leaders have embraced, we're looking for a real comprehensive look throughout the S-GNA buckets.
And one more thing to add to that, Ben. We launched Disney Plus in many, many markets around the world, including many, very low arpour markets. And not only did we launch in those markets, but we spent a lot of money on marketing in those markets, and we spent money on local content. So as we rationalize this business, and we head in the direction of profitability, clearly we're looking at opportunities to reduce expenses in those markets where the revenue potential just isn't there.
Hi. Hi. Great to see you. The next question comes from Phil. Two-sick of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
嗨,你好。很高兴见到你。下一个问题来自JP摩根的菲尔。请说。
Hi. Great to see you in the park soon. So, well, Christine, can you dig into the contribution from Shanghai and the public company, and where that is relative pre-COVID into its potential? And Bob Florida is such a big part of the value of the company, but you have this political issue that only seems to get more press. It seems like you're stuck with this fight.
So how should investors think about the risk, both the near term and long term business for Disney? Thank you.
那么投资者应该如何考虑迪士尼的风险,无论是短期还是长期业务?谢谢。
Hi, Phil. Yeah, let me address our results, Sean. Hi. They were incredibly positive this quarter. We've been really gratified to see the bounce back from the pandemic closures that we had. We're not going to get into too many specifics, but suffice it to say that the businesses doing extremely well on both an attendance and a per-cap basis.
We see that momentum continuing, and we also have some new attractions. We've talked about Zootopia coming later this year, and we believe that that is going to drive even further attendance and spending at the park. But Shanghai is doing extremely well, and we've been really gratified to see that bounce back. Like I said, it was closed for quite a long period of time during the pandemic.
Regarding Florida, I got a few things I want to say about that, Phil. First of all, I think the case that we filed last month made our position in the facts very clear. And that's really that this is about one thing and one thing only, and that's retaliating against this for taking a position about pending legislation. And we believe that in us taking that position, we are merely exercising our right to free speech.
Also this is not about special privileges or a level playing field or Disney in any way using its leverage around the state of Florida. But since it's been a lot said about special districts and the arrangement that we had, I want to set the record straight on that too. There are about 2000 special districts in Florida, and most were established to foster investment and development, where we were one of them.
It basically made it easier for us and others, by the way, to do business in Florida. And we built a business that employees, as we've said before, over 75,000 people and attracts tens of millions of people to the state. So while it's easy to say that the really creek special district that was established for us over 50 years ago, benefited us, it's misleading to not also consider how much Disney benefited the state of Florida. And we're also not the only company operating a special district. I mentioned 2000, the day's tone of speedway, it has one, so do the villages, which is a prominent retirement community and their countless others. So the goal here is leveling the playing, if the goal is leveling the playing field, then a uniform application of the law or government oversight of special districts needs to occur or be applied to all special districts. There's also a false narrative that we've been fighting to protect tax breaks as part of this. But in fact, we're the largest taxpayer in central Florida, paying over 1.1 billion in state and local taxes last year alone. And we pay more taxes, specifically more real estate taxes, as a result of that special district. And we all know there was no concerted effort to do anything to dismantle what was once called really creek special district until we spoke out on the legislation. So this is plainly a matter of retaliation while the rest of the Florida special districts continue operating basically as they were. And I think it's also important for us to say our primary goal has always been to be able to continue to do exactly what we've been doing there, which investing in Florida. We're proud of the tourism industry that we created. And we want to continue delivering the best possible experience for guests going forward. We never wanted or and we certainly never expected to be in the position of having to defend our business interests in federal court, particularly having such a terrific relationship with the state as we've had for more than 50 years. And as I mentioned on our shareholder call, we have a huge opportunity to continue to invest in Florida. I noted that our plans were to invest 17 billion over the next 10 years, which is what the state should want us to do. We operate responsibly. We pair fair share taxes. We employ thousands of people. And by the way, we pay them above the minimum wage substantially, above the minimum wage dictated by the state of Florida. We also provide them with great benefits and free education. So I'm going to finish what is obviously kind of a long answer by asking one question. Is the state want us to invest more, employ more people, and pay more taxes or not? Thanks.
I have two. Bob, first few is, where is the impact of the slowdown in your GTC content spending will have on global subscriber growth? And then what does the move to one app in the US offers a solution? And Christine, any help on future cash content spending? You said this year is flat. Is this the peak year? And then we start seeing the decline from this year. Any help there? I think you should cash content spending will be helpful. Thanks.
Michael, when we launched the service, let me remind everyone it was only three and a half years ago. So we're still a startup in many ways. The goal was, you know, global subs. And we wanted to flood the so-called digital shelves with as much content as possible to achieve, obviously, as much sub-growth as possible. And now, as we grow the business in terms of the global footprint, we realized that we made a lot of content that is not necessarily driving sub-growth. And we're getting much more surgical about what it is we make. So as we look to reduce content spend, we're looking to reduce it in a way that should not have any impact at all on subs. We believe that there's an opportunity for us to focus more on real sub-drivers.
And one interesting example, and I should also throw marketing in too, where when you make a lot of content, everything needs to be marketed. You're spending a lot of money marketing things that are not going to have an impact on the bottom line, except negatively, due to the marketing costs. One thing we also know is that our films, those that are released theatrically, big tentful movies in particular, are great sub-drivers. But we were spreading our marketing costs so thin that we were not allocating enough money to even market them when they came on the service, as witnessed by the ones that are coming up, including Avatar, Little Mermaid, Guardians of the Galaxy, Indiana Jones, Elemental, etc., where we actually believe we have an opportunity to lean into those more, put the right marketing dollars against it, allocate more from, basically away from, programming that was not driving any subs at all.
So I guess this is part of the maturation process. As we grow into a business that we had never been in, we're learning a lot more about it, specifically we're learning a lot more about how our content behaves on the service, and what are these consumers want?
Hi, Michael. I'll address your question on content spend. As you know, this is an area that Bob is spending a lot of time working with our creative teams on. But when you think about that $30 billion overall in Bob's targeted, a annualized saving in the $3 billion range, I just want to remind everyone that the sports component of that amount is now over 30 percent, you know, just due to the contractual rate increases that we've had in our contract rights, our sports rights.
The other thing is in fiscal 23, we said that we're going to be roughly comparable to last year. Remember last year we came in slightly below 30 billion, and this estimate does not include any potential impacts from the writer's strike. So we have not estimated that because that's a new development and we haven't really quantified what that would be because we don't know how long it's going to last. But in general, what we're really doing is looking at a lower volume of content, as I mentioned in my comments, and Bob is once again going through all of the development slates, they're really looking at not only our Disney branded, but also a more curated approach to our general entertainment content.
Operator, next question please. The next question comes from Jessica Reis, her luck of BSA securities. Please go ahead. Thank you. Bob, you mentioned that in the upfront you will take a bigger share, or I mean, you'll lean heavily into digital or avod. I'm just wondering, in the face of accelerating, pay TV, universe decline, is that enough to accept many or losses, or when will it be enough to accept many or losses and start to drive growth? And in the sub-universe decline thought, just wondering if you can give us your updated thoughts on ESPN and how it transitions or when it transitions to ESPN plus.
Well, I'll address the ESPN first. We haven't really changed our position regarding basically migrating ESPN's flagship service as a direct to consumer or streaming platform. We think there's an inevitability to that, but it's a huge decision for us to make, and we know that we've got to get it right both in terms of pricing and timing. And obviously, that has not only a direct impact on the linear channels, but it will have an even greater impact on it if we were to do that.
What we see going on in linear networks is, you know, I'm not saying anything that you don't know, is we're seeing both sub-declines and advertising weakness. And it's created, you know, worrisome circumstance for us because it's obviously having such a negative impact on the economics of that business. And that's forcing us to take a look at the cost structure of those channels, which ultimately comes down probably more than anything, just spending on programming. But the client of the business is, by the way, something that we predicted starting in 2015-16, which is why we got into the streaming business to begin with. But the declines that we're seeing, you know, put even more pressure on us to turn that streaming business into a profitable growth business for us.
And that's why all of the steps that we're taking, both in terms of the organizational structure, the cost reductions, the marketing changes, the changes in how we program the average for being into advertising. We've also, by the way, Jessica, we've invested a fair amount in the technology needed to serve advertisers digitally much more effectively with automated sales functionality and delivering in a very, very granular way exactly what advertisers want. So we're very bullish about leaning into digital advertising. We're bullish about how we're positioned there. We're bullish about Disney Plus and Hulu and that combination, by the way.
We think that by making Hulu available as a one app experience, we'll increase engagement and increase our opportunity in terms of serving digital ads and growing our advertising business. All things are kind of connected, ESPN to the long term health of the bundle, the growth and the need to grow streaming as a reaction to the deterioration of linear businesses and of course all the steps that we've been taking to get to profitability.
All right, operator, next question, please. The next question comes from Kenan Ben-Khotha, the Teshwar of Barclays. Please go ahead. Thank you. Bob and Hulu, the revenues of Hulu make it one of the biggest streaming businesses around and it's also one of the older services around but it doesn't seem to be profitable despite the scale and sound like you've made up your mind on buying the rest of Hulu based on the announcement of the combination with Disney Plus.
Does this combination allow you to change the cost structure of Hulu by maybe dropping content spending or the number of titles on Hulu and raising price because it's now a single service? So any color on your plans with Hulu would be much appreciated.
And Christine on the parks, could you help us clear the impact of the recent wage increases in Florida and how that might impact the year? And historically the business has delivered mid-singly, which is a better revenue growth and EBITDA growth faster than that.
You now have a number of pro ships, more attractions, higher price but also higher cost. So could you help us think about the growth algorithm going forward more broadly? Thank you.
Kenan, as you know, we have a contract for arrangement with Comcast that will enable them to put their share of Hulu back to us in early 2024. Starting in early 2024 is a, I guess, further right that we have to call their share from them.
And it's not really been fully determined what will happen in that regard except that as we look more and more at the growth of our or the future of our streaming business, and I mentioned that the first earnings call that I did after I came back that everything was on the table.
And in fact, everything was on the table. I've now had another three months to really study this carefully and figure out what is the best path for us to grow this business. And it's clear that a combination of the content that is on Disney Plus with general entertainment is a very strong combination.
实际上,一切都在讨论的范畴内。现在,我又有了三个月的时间来认真研究,找出什么是我们发展这个业务的最佳路径。很明显,在 Disney Plus 上的内容与一般娱乐的结合是一种非常强大的组合。
From a subscriber perspective, from a subscriber acquisition, subscriber retention perspective, and also from an advertiser's perspective. So where we are headed is for one experience that would have general entertainment and Disney Plus content together for the reasons that I just described.
How that ultimately unfolds is to some extent in the hands of Comcast, and in the hands of basically a conversation or a negotiation that we have with them. I don't want to be in any way predictive in terms of when or how that ends up.
I can say we've had some conversations with them already. They've been cordial and they're aimed at being constructive, but I can't tell you and I can't really say where they end up only to say that there seems to be real value in having general entertainment combined with Disney Plus. And ultimately, Hulu is that solution. That's where we're bullish about that.
Hi, Kenan. Let me address your question on Park's Erning's growth and the outlook there. So I think the way I would phrase this is we do expect a really solid year overall for our domestic parks.
That being said, we also expect increased costs. We alluded to that in our first quarter earnings call. They're really coming from a few areas most predominately. One is wages with a new union contract, coupled with inflationary trends.
We do have some new guest offerings, so there's some incremental operating expenses that come along with those. We also have the operational support for adding a fifth cruise ship to our cruise line fleet. I think you all know that we launched the Wishback last fall.
So we continue to look at ways to address cost management. The team down there has done a great job throughout the pandemic and then coming out of the pandemic, but they utilize a variety of tactics to mitigate potential margin pressures and downside risk across the segments.
And some of the levers that they can utilize to really address it are by looking at capacity. Some of our new attractions, they increase the footprint or increase capacity so we can open up the valve a little bit more on attendance and with some new attractions that are more based on newer IP, so that will get more people not only coming in but wanting to come in and enjoy the experience while they're there.
And we also are really continuing to focus on meeting our customer needs there. But we think that this is a growth business for us. We've said so in the past. And I do just want to give a call out to our cruise business.
That business, as you know, was the most impacted. We had talked about that that was going to be the last business to come back from the closures during the pandemic, but that business has come back incredibly strongly over the last year, this fiscal year.
And even looking out to the balance of our fiscal year, we're very encouraged by what we're seeing there and the reception to not only our new ship but also our legacy ships within the fleet.
The next question comes from Michael Morris of Guggenheim. Please go ahead.
下一个问题来自高盛的Michael Morris, 请提出您的问题。
Thank you. Good afternoon. What are the ones on direct consumer advertising? And I'd love to hear any early details you can share about the Disney Plus with the advertising product.
谢谢。下午好。您对直接面向消费者广告有什么看法?我很想听听关于迪士尼+广告产品的早期细节。
You know, it wasn't mentioned as a driver and I realized it's early, but I would love to hear any early takes there and thoughts about how that might pace over the course of the year. And then second, Bob, I'd love to ask about artificial intelligence, clearly a very hot topic right now and a technology that seems like it could be pretty impactful to your business, both your ability to use it, but also just given how much intellectual property you have to protect something that could be a threat as well. So love any takes that you can share on how that would impact the business over time.
Thank you. I think at Gigi, Michael, I'm looking forward to a time where maybe AI does earnings calls for me. You probably wouldn't know the difference, perhaps. And maybe they'd be better, I don't know. I'd use AI to ask the questions, too. It's pretty clear that AI developments represent some pretty interesting opportunities for us and some substantial benefits. In fact, we're already starting to use AI to create some efficiencies and ultimately to better serve consumers, getting closer to the customer is something that is a real goal of ours.
And we think that AI will provide some great opportunities to do that, but it's also clear that AI is going to be highly disruptive. And it could be extremely difficult to manage, particularly from an IP management perspective. I can tell you that our legal team is working overtime already to try to come to grips with what could be some of the challenges here. And we're certainly not the only ones. I think this is across not only our industry, but industries. So I'd have to say overall, I'm bullish about the prospects because they think they'll create efficiencies and waste for us to basically provide better services to customers. On the other hand, I think that there's a lot we're going to have to contend with that will be quite disruptive and quite challenging.
Getting more specific is not something I really prepared to do right now. And I will take the Disney Plus ad tear question for you. As you know, we launched back in December. So we've just begun to scratch the surface of what we can really do on advertising on Disney Plus. And we look at this as an incredible opportunity for longer term advertising positioning. Just to remind everyone, we do have a lighter ad load on Disney Plus versus what we have on Hulu. And also, notwithstanding the very challenging macroeconomic advertising market, we're still seeing our consumers come into the not only existing, but also new signups come into that ad tear. So we're very encouraged by that.
As Bob has mentioned previously, we have invested a lot in our ad tear technology and our data platforms were really providing state-of-the-art programmatic and addressable ad tools to our advertisers. So those are also investments that we've made and we believe are going to pay off not only today, but position us well for the future as some ad market overall gets stronger. The other thing I just want to mention is we will be launching the ad tear on Disney Plus in Europe by the end of this calendar year. So that will be another platform that will have or another offering that will have for consumers outside of the U.S.
Operator, we have time for one more question. Operator, one last question, please. The last question comes from Doug Mitchellson of Credit Sweat. Please go ahead. Thanks so much. Just stuck me in good afternoon. Bob, integrating Hulu into the Disney Plus app is intriguing. So I wanted to continue that conversation. When Disney Plus was launched, you noted consumers should not have to buy through your entertainment content to get the Marvel and Star Wars and Disney and Pixar content. You thought at the time having separate services to give consumers choice was the right approach. You will have multiple services to give consumer choice.
The answer is yes, but you want the efficiency and flexibility of a single app. That would suggest that Disney Plus is finally turning into a platform. I'm just curious if you see the opportunity broadened the number of subscriptions that can live on that Disney Plus platform or if you can expand the monetization of that platform in other ways while maintaining a premium experience for consumers. And I guess that one for Christine is fiscal 3Q, the peak for streaming losses. Thank you, Bob.
We on the integrated app experience that we announced today, that's for consumers that have subscribed to both services for now. So another word is it's taking what we call the dual bundle and putting it together in one experience, which is obviously good for consumers, why have to close out one app and open another one. So it becomes a one app experience. We also think that it will benefit basically consumption in general, lower turn, be more attractive. It's just an all in one. It's a bigger platform, basically more content than it offered before. Outside the United States, we created that with Star, which doesn't have all the programming of Hulu. It has a significant amount and it's working quite well. And it's one of the reasons why we're going to launch that as an average supported platform as Christine mentioned. So I think to answer your question, we're bullish about an app that goes well beyond the Disney Plus branded content and includes general entertainment, which I maybe at one point I called undifferentiated, that was a little harsh. But it includes quality curated general entertainment for the purpose of growing advertising, growing subscriber fees, growing engagement, growing a lessening churn, and to address one part of your question, reducing costs.
Hi, Doug. And I'll answer your question on the direct to consumer losses and the peak losses. Just to remind everyone, we did say, and it is the case, that we had peak losses in direct to consumer in the fourth quarter of 22. That was the quarter that we reported in November. So what you've seen since then is we improved on a sequential linked quarter basis. You've seen a $400 million improvement in Q1, another $400 million improvement in Q2. In my comments, I did say that Q3, it would widen out by $100 million because of the timing of some releases and particularly the marketing of those releases. But that will be an aberration because it's not a linear path, but we will be improving significantly from 22 peak losses in Q4 through the balance of fiscal 23. So you should assume that what you saw back in Q4 was the peak loss and we have improved for the next two quarters. There will be that one little blip in Q3 and then we expect to be back on the path for the balance of the fiscal year.
Very helpful. Thank you. Thanks. Okay, thanks for the question.
非常有帮助。谢谢。谢谢。好的,感谢你的问题。
I want to thank everyone for joining us today. Note that a reconciliation of non-GAP measures that were referred to on this call to equivalent to GAP measures can be found on our investor relations website. Let me also remind you that certain statements on this call, including financial estimates or statements about our plans, guidance or expectations or other statements that are not historical in nature, may constitute forward-looking statements on the security flaws. We make these statements on the basis of our abuse and assumptions regarding future events and business performance at the time we make them.
We do not undertake any obligations to update these statements. We are looking statements subject to a number of risk and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially from the results expressed or implied in light of a variety of factors including economic or industry conditions and execution risks, including in connection with our organizational structure and operating changes, cost savings and DPC business plans with relating to content, subscriber and revenue growth and profitability. For more information about the key risk factors, please refer to our investor relations website, the press release issue today and the risk and uncertainties described in our form PEMK, form PENQ and other filings for the Securities and Exchange Commission.
We want to thank you for joining us today and wish everyone a good rest of the day. Conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation and you may now disconnect.