Connect with us

Published

on

Disney CEO Bob Iger on Marvel and Star Wars: Pulling back to find focus and contain costs

Disney is slowing down when it comes to making movies and TV series for its Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm franchises, CEO Bob Iger said on CNBC Thursday.

The move comes as the company is looking to cut costs during a time when its recent films, from Marvel to animation, have underwhelmed at the box office.

“You pull back not just to focus, but also as part of our cost containment initiative. Spending less on what we make, and making less,” Iger said Thursday.

Earlier this year, Disney rolled out a broad reorganization of the business that included $5.5 billion in cutting close, of which $3 billion would be slashed from content excluding sports.

Iger said Thursday that a lot of decisions were made to prop up the company’s flagship streaming service, Disney+, and beckon more customers.

While also noting that Disney had some Pixar animation misses in recent months, he called out Marvel as being a particular example of the company’s “zeal” to pump up its original content on streaming.

“Marvel is a great example of that. It had not been in the television business at any significant level, and not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of TV series,” said Iger. “Frankly, it diluted focus and attention.”

Disney acquired Marvel for more than $4 billion in 2009, and the franchise has since grossed billions of dollars at the global box office for the company.

Disney CEO Bob Iger speaking with CNBC’s David Faber at the Allen&Co. Annual Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. 

David A. Grogan | CNBC

Earlier this year, Iger had said the company needed to assess how many sequels each character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe should spur, and it was time to explore “newness” for the brand. He added there was “nothing in any way inherently off in terms of the Marvel brand” at an investor conference.

Earlier this year, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” debuted as the 31st film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, kicking off the fifth phase of the 15-year old franchise. The film had seen the sharpest decline in ticket sales from its opening weekend to second weekend in franchise history. The Marvel installment also raked in mixed to negative reviews.

Meanwhile, Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” has done much better, grossing over $800 million globally.

On the Lucasfilm front, there hasn’t been a Star Wars film in theaters since 2019, and the company has focused primarily on series, such as Emmy nominees “Andor” and “Obi-Wan Kenobi” for Disney+. Lucasfilm’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” the fifth film in that franchise, has underwhelmed at the box office despite a plum release date around the Fourth of July.

Still, similar to Marvel, Lucasfilm has been provided a well of revenue for Disney.

The company bought Lucasfilm in 2012 for about $4 billion, and recouped its investment in just six years after a lucrative new trilogy of films, along with standalone films such as “Rogue One.”

For Disney, and most of its streaming competitors, original content has lived solely on its flagship streaming services rather than being licensed to other platforms – a revenue driver that has stood up the traditional TV and movie business for sometime.

On Thursday, Iger said it was “a possibility” that could happen for Disney’s streaming content.

“It’s a possibility. I won’t rule it out,” Iger said. He added that licensing had been part of a collection of models that formed the traditional TV business, and holding back content for their own platform in the early days of streaming was the right move.

Recently, Warner Bros. Discovery has reportedly been in talks about licensing HBO content to other platforms, including Netflix. The company also has removed content from its Max service and licensed it to free, ad-supported streaming platforms such as Fox Corp.’s Tubi.

Disney has also followed suit in taking down content from its streaming platform.

Continue Reading

Technology

Why Jim Cramer wants to load up on more shares of this DuPont spinoff

Published

on

By

Why Jim Cramer wants to load up on more shares of this DuPont spinoff

Continue Reading

Technology

Palantir tops estimates, boosts fourth-quarter guidance on AI adoption

Published

on

By

Palantir tops estimates, boosts fourth-quarter guidance on AI adoption

Alex Karp, chief executive officer of Palantir Technologies Inc., speaks during the AIPCon conference in Palo Alto, California, US, on March 13, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Palantir reported quarterly results that topped analysts’ estimates and issued better-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter, attributing much of its strength to artificial intelligence. The stock rose about 1% in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG estimates:

Earnings per share: 21 cents adjusted vs. 17 cents expected

Revenues: $1.18 billion vs. $1.09 billion expected

Palantir, which builds analytics tools for large companies and government agencies, said it expects revenue of about $1.33 billion for the current period, exceeding the $1.19 billion expected by analysts, according to LSEG.

The optimistic guidance comes even as the government shutdown stretches into its second calendar month, and potentially threatens some key contracts. Revenue in Palantir’s U.S. government business grew 52% in the quarter from a year ago to $486 million.

Government sales, particularly from military agencies, have been central to Palantir’s ongoing ascent. Over the years, Palantir has steadily beat out major legacy government contractors, and recently landed a deal worth up to $10 billion contract with the U.S. Army.

Palantir has also faced criticism over how its tools are being used by government agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Total revenue in the quarter jumped 63% from $725.5 million a year ago, exceeding $1 billion for the second straight quarter. Net income more than tripled to $475.6 million, or 18 cents per share, from $143.5 million, or 6 cents per share, a year earlier.

For the full year, Palantir now expects about $4.4 billion in sales, topping the $4.17 billion forecast by Wall Street. The company also bumped up its full-year free cash flow outlook to between $1.9 billion and $2.1 billion.

Palantir’s U.S. commercial business more than doubled to $397 million. Total contract value for U.S. commercial deals closed more than quadrupled to $1.31 billion. Over the last few weeks, the company has announced new partnerships with Snowflake, Lumen and Nvidia.

Retail investors have helped drive Palantir’s skyrocketing stock price to new heights. The shares have surged more than 170% this year, lifting the company’s market cap past $490 billion and cementing the company among the most valuable technology names in the world.

Analysts have raised concerns about the stock, which trades at an extreme multiple relative to technology behemoths with far more revenue. In a letter to shareholders, CEO Alex Karp called out the “detractors” who have been “left in a kind of deranged and self-destructive befuddlement.”

“The reality is that Palantir has made it possible for retail investors to achieve rates of return previously limited to the most successful venture capitalists in Palo Alto,” he wrote. “And we have done so through authentic and substantive growth.”

In an interview with CNBC’s Morgan Brennan on Monday, Karp acknowledged that there’s excess in the AI market today and that some companies are eventually going to feel the pain.

“The strong companies are going to get much stronger, and the people pretending they’re doing stuff are going to disappear very quickly,” Karp said.

WATCH: D.A. Davidson’s Luria on Palantir

Palantir is the best software company and it's not even close, says D.A. Davidson's Gil Luria

Continue Reading

Technology

Ether falls 7% following a multimillion dollar hack of a decentralized finance protocol

Published

on

By

Ether falls 7% following a multimillion dollar hack of a decentralized finance protocol

Representation of Ethereum, with its native cryptocurrency ether.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Ether fell as much as 9% on Monday, slipping below its critical $3,600 support level, shortly after a multimillion dollar hack affected a protocol on the token’s native network. 

The cryptocurrency, which is issued on Ethereum, was last down 6.6% at around $3,600, CoinMetrics data shows. That’s roughly 25% off its high of $4,885 hit on August 22

The coin’s tumble came after Ethereum-based decentralized finance protocol Balancer on Monday lost possibly more than $100 million in a hack. The exploit marks the latest in a series of bearish events that have put digital assets investors on tenterhooks over the past few weeks.

In mid-October, U.S. President Donald Trump announced “massive” tariffs on China over its restriction of rare earth exports, kicking off investors’ flight from crypto to risk-off assets such as gold. And although the president later walked back that threat, his comments sparked a sell-off that triggered cascading liquidations of highly leveraged digital asset positions

Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell cautioned investors about expecting future rate cuts, adding to existing bearish market sentiment.     

“These events have put investors on uneasy footing as we roll into November,” Juan Leon, senior investment strategist at Bitwise, told CNBC. “Macro volatility notwithstanding, this October’s drawdown appears to have been a healthy, albeit sharp, de-leveraging event that flushed speculative excess from the market.”

Some stocks linked to digital assets are also coming under pressure. Coinbase shares were down nearly 4%, while Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy edged down more than 1%.   

Continue Reading

Trending