The head of
Walt Disney’s
lucrative parks division said Monday there had been no impact on business results from the firm’s recent political brushes in Florida.
Josh D’Amaro, chairman of
Disney
parks, experiences, and products, was asked at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference whether recent headlines in Florida have impacted operations. “It has not,” D’Amaro said, according to a transcript provided by Sentieo.
“As you’ve seen in our results, the progress that we’ve made coming out of Covid has been exceptionally strong. So some of the things that are happening—and I assume you mean from a political perspective, et cetera—some of the things that have been taking place have not impacted our business results.”
Disney stock was up 0.4% in Monday afternoon trading. The company said earlier this month that revenue in D’Amaro’s parks, experiences, and products segment were up 17% to $7.78 billion in the fiscal second quarter.
Disney is suing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, alleging the Republican lawmaker retaliated against the company for its stance against a piece of legislation that bans discussions of sexual orientation in elementary schools.
After Disney spoke out against the bill, which was dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, DeSantis signed a bill that replaced the board of a special district that let Disney self-govern its Florida resort and theme parks with outside appointees. The DeSantis administration has said the firm had no right to “operate its own government or maintain special privileges not held by other businesses in the state.”
D’Amaro told staff last week the company no longer planned to build a campus in Lake Nona, Fla., and wouldn’t move some employees in D’Amaro’s division to the state. D’Amaro, in a memo to staff viewed by Barron’s, cited the firm’s leadership changes and business conditions.
“We’re not going to have the campus in Florida and we’ll keep things as they are right now from a cash perspective and an employee perspective, and making sure that we’re taking care of our cast members the right way,” he said.
The firm also said last week it planned to shut down Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, a luxury boutique hotel experience that charged nearly $5,000 for a couple over a two-night stay. It included a day trip to Disney World’s Hollywood Studios theme park, through a special entrance in the Star Wars section of the park. D’Amaro said the firm expects about $100 million to $150 million acceleration in depreciation in the fiscal third and fourth quarters, each.
“It didn’t perform exactly like we wanted it to perform, so we decided that we were going to sunset this in September,” D’Amaro said at the J.P. Morgan conference today. “Our cast members that operated this, for anybody who had a chance to go check it out, it did just an exceptional job pulling it off.
He noted the hotel, though it attracted plenty of headlines, only had 100 rooms, out of 30,000 rooms across Disney World.
“So this is very, very small in the context of what we deliver at Walt Disney World,” he said. “But again, I give the imagineers a lot of credit because this gives us the creative insight to think about new experiences as we move forward. But it’s small in the context of Walt Disney World.”
Write to Connor Smith at [email protected]
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