Death, taxes, and… the House of Mouse reminding everyone it still runs the most efficient money-extraction operation on Earth…

This morning, investors were reminded that betting against The Magic Kingdom has historically been a bad life choice… right up there with shorting Palantir or convincing yourself you should send that paragraph long message at 1am…

Anyway. In what’s shaping up to be the last earnings curtain calls before Bob Iger eventually moonwalks into the sunset (again), Disney beat expectations across the board in its fiscal first quarter.

Disney checked every earnings box in its fiscal first quarter, beating Wall Street on both the top and bottom line. Adjusted EPS hit $1.63, topping expectations, while revenue reached $26 billion, comfortably ahead of forecasts.

But buried inside those numbers is the real takeaway: Disney’s experiences division (parks, resorts, cruises) just crossed $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time ever. Turns out charging adults to relive their childhood is still a wildly scalable business model.

Domestic parks raked in $6.91 billion, up 7% from last year. International parks added $1.75 billion, also up 7%, despite tourists being slightly less horny for international travel. Translation: Attendance rose, wallets opened wider, and Disney once again proved it can charge whatever it wants as long as there’s a castle involved.

Funny how that makes the D23 spending spree feel a lot less impulsive.

(Source: Deadline)

For years, Disney’s parks have been the company’s life support system… keeping the lights on while streaming set money on fire, cable TV slowly decomposed, and Hollywood tried to convince itself audiences were “fatigued” by anything that wasn’t a sequel. This quarter finally put numbers to it: the experiences business generated three times more operating income than entertainment. Go ahead. Sit with that.

Parks delivered $3.31 billion in profit, up 6% from last year. Entertainment (movies, TV, streaming) managed $1.1 billion, down 35%. Go ahead and blame movie flops like Snow White and whatever new Marvel slop they’re cooking up trying to pretend it’s 2012 again.

Streaming, to be fair, is finally starting to pay some rent. Revenue from Disney+ and Hulu climbed 11% to $5.35 billion, and Disney expects about $500 million in streaming operating income next quarter. That’s a $200 million year-over-year improvement… which means the bonfire phase may be ending soon.

The box office chipped in too. Disney steamrolled theaters last year off the back of Zootopia 2, fresh Avatar installments, and the usual franchise reheats. Same strategy as always…  just executed competently again.

Meanwhile, sports continues to be the emotional support animal that keeps biting. ESPN revenue inched up 1% to $4.91 billion, but operating income fell 23% thanks to exploding rights costs (NBA, college sports) and a $110 million bruise from that YouTube TV blackout. Advertising helped, sure… but it’s still hard to ignore that Stephen A. Smith and friends are basically a permanent expense line item.

Most importantly, hovering over this entire earnings report is the CEO succession question. Bob Iger is on his second “one last ride,” and Disney’s board is reportedly meeting this week to vote on who replaces him. Two names keep surfacing as front-runners. One is Dana Walden, co-chair of Disney Entertainment. The other is Josh D’Amaro… the guy currently running the profit engine.

And if this earnings report was a campaign ad, it essentially said: vote parks. D’Amaro oversees the division that just delivered record revenue, rising attendance, higher guest spending, and the clearest long-term growth runway Disney has. He’s also the one executing that $60 billion, decade-long parks expansion plan that investors suddenly care a lot more about now that the numbers back it up.

(Source: Bloomberg)

As CFO Hugh Johnston put it, “Turbocharging the parks, bringing streaming to profitability, and improving theatrical bodes well for a new CEO.” He didn’t say the quiet part out loud… but Wall Street heard it anyway. Disney even reiterated it’s on track to repurchase $7 billion in stock, expects double-digit adjusted EPS growth, and forecasts $19 billion in operating cash flow.

Sure, international travel could be a problem. New cruise ships and Frozen lands cost money before they make money. And ESPN remains a financial CrossFit class nobody asked for. But right now, Disney has momentum where it matters most.

The parks are humming. Streaming is stabilizing. And the guy running the happiest (and most profitable) place on Earth may be about to get the biggest promotion in entertainment.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Disney as mentioned in the article.