In a recent Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference, Disney’s CEO Bob Iger spoke about Disney’s reorganization and positioning themselves for future growth.
While the focus of the conversation was dominated by Disney+ and ESPN, Mr. Iger spoke enthusiastically about the parks. “Parks and resorts is a wonderful story,” Iger said. “Trends for this quarter show that domestic and international parks and experiences business will probably deliver in the neighborhood of low to mid-teens in terms of operating income.”
Mr. Iger added the company “has entered into a phase where we can start building.” He continued, “We have 1000s of acres of land to develop, we could actually build seven new full lands if we wanted to around the world, including the ability to increase the size of Disneyland in California, which everybody thinks is kind of landlocked, by 50%.”
“You can look at every single location that we’ve got and there’s land, opportunity, but most importantly, we have so much IP to mine that there’s opportunity there to create experiences that we know people will love to have in our parks. So you look at our IP, you look at the land that we have, you look at the math, the demand that exists in the marketplace, and you look at the return on invested capital. It’s a no-brainer to invest that way.”
Disney has presented “blue sky” concepts for new lands at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom and Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
Do you think Disney will make major announcements for park expansions?