This is like every company right now, and it's entirely because shareholders are parasites
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Shareholders are pensioners, IRA, and 401(k) account owners too. Small people with aspirations of retiring one day.
Most retirement accounts are in mutual funds, index funds, bonds, and other "safe" investments. It's difficult for an average person to lose their shirt in stocks because of regulations and laws, which also means large stock increases don't affect average people much either.
In Q4, Disney+ added 7 million new subscribers, bringing its total to 150.2 million
apparently 150.2 million subscribers can't pay for Pixar? even at the bare minimum pricing (that includes ads so generates revenue) that's gonna be at least $750m monthly revenue
or maybe it has more to do with layoffs causing stock price rises, so good to sacrifice workers for the shareholders.
People don't seem to understand that the final solution for capitalism is ZERO labor — ZERO human workforce — as humans are extremely inefficient. The problem is that the entire engine fuelling capitalism also requires a population of consumers making money through their labor, to pay (demand) for goods and services. Without that demand the entire engine shuts down, and we're left with either some form of autocratic dystopia or Star Trek grade socialism.
TL;DR Capitalism is destined to consume itself eventually.
Reducing work for humans is a goal we should strive for.
But we need to also reduce average working hours and set up ubi.
Yes. Automation is how we ultimately achieve freedom and post scarcity, but only if the value is distributed across the population. If it's not, then automation is the harbinger of authoritarianism, global depression, war, and mass murder.
Streaming is a bad business model. It's all a shell game because it doesn't work on its own. They're all afraid to not have a streaming service because they don't want one service to emerge as the sole winner and dictate licensing terms to them.
It's like the prisoner's dilemma: the best business decision would be to stick with direct sales of physical media and digital downloads (which once upon a time made studios a lot of money), but they're all forced through competition to choose streaming, which means they all lose money hand over fist.
Most people don't know that Netflix funded a lot of its original programming by taking on a lot of debt. The company currently has over $11 billion in outstanding debt, most of which comes due in 4 years.
Disney is buoyed by its parks and linear programming (network and cable TV), but the latter is constantly eroding.
Paramount is the same story, but without the parks.
Amazon of course has its retail shopping ads (sponsored products) and AWS. Prime Video as an "investment" is a drop in the bucket. And of course they recently raised prices and leaned more heavily into streaming ads to try to claw back losses.
And when faced with the choice of protecting this money-burning business or laying off workers, cutting costs, and so on, studios repeatedly choose the latter. No other option than protect the prestige business that so many executives have tied their reputation to...
Most people don’t know that Netflix funded a lot of its original programming by taking on a lot of debt. The company currently has over $11 billion in outstanding debt, most of which comes due in 4 years.
While I did not know that about Netflix, taking on debt to keep up with business needs is how the vast majority of businesses grow so it shouldn't be a surprise.
I know, but the size of new debt (relative to their revenues at the time) surprised industry observers back in the day. There were lots of articles about it.
The company declared positive cash flow in 2021 ($5.12 B) for the first time since 2011, and then earnings dropped in 2022 to ($4.49 B). Subscriber numbers continue to creep up relatively slowly. The debt is due in four years. While I think Netflix as a business is probably in the best shape relative to its peers, I think there's a chance that they may need to issue new stock around that time frame. That would be a very bad signal to Wall Street. It'll be very interesting to see where they and the rest of the industry are at that time.
Do we get a Pixar movie about talking office supplies that have to reckon with the layoffs?!
2023 / 2024: We're rich and you're fired.
but yea blame the zoomers or whatever
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Disney said it expects to get its streaming service out of the red by Q4 2024 as a result of the “restructuring” of the company that “enabled tremendous efficiencies,” CEO Bob Iger told investors during earnings.
Pixar’s “Elemental” was cited as one of the popular titles to hit the streaming platform in the quarter alongside other Disney and Marvel releases, like “The Little Mermaid” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.
3.” “Elemental” had grossed half a billion worldwide, Disney said, and was the most-viewed film on Disney+ in the quarter, but was initially considered a box office bomb and one of the worst debuts in Pixar’s 28-year history.
The film made up for its poor opening over time, but had followed other under-performing titles like “Lightyear” and “Onward,” which forced Disney to reconsider its release strategy.
“Disney had more or less trained audiences to expect big, hot Pixar content at home,” explained Brandon Katz, an entertainment industry strategist at Parrot Analytics.
Earlier in 2023, Pixar laid off 75 positions including two executives behind “Lightyear,” Reuters reported, including longtime animators Angus MacLane (“Toy Story 4,” “Coco”) and Galyn Susman, who had been with Pixar since the original “Toy Story.” Those cuts were part of Iger’s plan to reduce headcount by 7,000 jobs and $5.5 billion in costs, the report said.
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Frick even the zar eh?