Disney Job Cuts Begin, Targeting 7,000 Positions

We knew this was coming and they are enacting those layoffs. Good news for the stock, right? Yes, this was very much expected. I mean, we have about five and a half billion dollars, as you just mentioned, in cost cuts. About three billion of those are from content savings, but about two and a half billion are going to be from the non-content part of it. So the SG&A and, of course, the head count reduction is part of that. Again, 7,000 employees, that's about 4% of their global workforce. But the important thing is that the cost cuts are underway, and this is really important for them to get back to profitability.

That is really restoring the magic for Disney. Disney shares now hire by a percentage point, those gains accelerating. I guess saying that there will be a smaller wave of cuts in the next four days, several thousand in April, and it will be concluded by the summer. Geetha, why is it important that this is done quickly? Yeah, it is. It's really important because of all of the whole narrative now shifting so quickly to profitability. For the longest time, Ed, this was always about streaming subscribers, getting the maximum number of subscribers. But now, obviously, the new narrative has been that focus on profitability.

And for that, obviously, they have identified so many different cost cuts and different parts of the organization. It's important for them to get this done quickly, because they're also undergoing a larger structural reorganization. They're trying to simplify the entire operations with just ESPN becoming its own segment. So it's important to get everything, all their ducks in a row before going ahead to Wall Street and telling the street that things are really taking shape.

Bloomberg