West News Wire: On the company’s earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Bob Iger said that Disney will be cutting 7,000 positions.
Iger stated that the corporation is aiming to save $5.5 billion in overall costs. He said, $2.5 billion will come from non-content cuts, with $3 billion coming from content cuts overall, excluding sports.
Iger, who re-joined the corporation as CEO in November, asserted that the restructuring would lead to a more efficient, integrated, and streamlined approach to our operations. “I did not make this choice hastily.
3% of the company’s 220,000 employees worldwide were affected by the job cuts, according to a regulatory filing from October.
The change will take place concurrently with a restructuring that would separate the corporation into three main segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN and Disney Parks, Iger said.
The cutbacks arrive amid a string of layoffs in the media industry. Warner Bros. Discovery, Dotdash Meredith and Vox Media are among the companies that have slashed jobs in recent months.
Jessica Reif Ehrlich, an analyst at Bank of America who closely follows Disney, told news reporters before the earnings call that she expected Iger to address jobs at the company.
“There’s nothing worse than anyone wondering whether they’ll have a job or not,” Ehrlich said. “There’s nothing worse than people walking around saying, ‘What are you hearing?’ ‘What are you hearing?'”
“The certainty is the most important thing,” she added.
Before the announcement, the company released an earnings report that exceeded Wall Street expectations on revenue. Disney brought in $23.5 billion in revenue over the three months ending in December, which marked an 8% growth over the same period a year prior.
