How Much Is Disney Worth? (2024)

The Walt Disney Company (DIS) is a large and diversified Global 500 entertainment and media enterprise headquartered in Burbank, California. The company’s vision is to “entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling.”

The premier entertainment company operates businesses in many different industries. The most significant operations include media networks, theme parks, studio entertainment and direct-to-consumer productions.

About Walt Disney Company

Walt Disney founded the company in 1923. Interestingly, he took some major financial risks in his career. Today, Disney has 223,000 employees, according to data from Zippia.

Disney parks include many well-known theme parks, resorts, cruise lines and other experiences around the world. Some of the most popular include:

• Walt Disney World Resort in Florida
• Disneyland Resort in California
• Disneyland Paris
• Disney Cruise Lines

Disney direct-to-consumer offerings include the following streaming services:

• Disney+
• ESPN+
• Hulu
• Hotstar

The Studio Entertainment business produces live-action and animated films for the following:

• Walt Disney Animation Studios
• Walt Disney Live Action
• Pixar
• Marvel Studios
• Lucasfilm
• Disney Music Group

Disney licenses its intellectual property to merchandise manufacturers, publishers, retail stores and more. It also creates video games, magazines, books and other print pieces. Keep reading to see how much Disney is worth, including its market cap, significant operations and future outlook.

How Much Is Disney’s Net Worth?

According to Disney’s earnings report for the first quarter of 2023, total revenues exceeded $23.51 billion, an 8% increase from the previous year. Net income was $1.28 billion, up from $1.15 billion in 2022.

Here are the company’s valuation measures, as posted by Yahoo Finance.

Disney Market Cap

Disney stock experienced a 52-week low of $84.07 per share and a high of $144.46. The company’s market cap fluctuated in proportion to those share prices. The March 21 price of $96.54 gave Disney a market cap of $176.36 billion.

What Is Market Capitalization?

A company’s market capitalization calculates the total market value of all outstanding stock at current market prices. Market cap is one way of estimating how much a company is worth. For example, a company with one million outstanding shares trading at $50 would have a market cap of $50 million.

Companies are typically categorized in one of the following groups:

• Small cap: less than $2 billion
• Mid cap: $2 billion to $10 billion
• Large cap: greater than $10 billion

Calculating Disney’s Net Worth

You can calculate Disney’s net worth by subtracting its liabilities from its assets. For the fiscal year ending Dec. 31, 2022, Disney’s balance sheet showed $202.12 billion in total assets. The same report stated that its liabilities were $93.25 billion. By this formula, Disney’s net worth is about $108.87 billion.

The GOBankingRates net worth formula is a calculation of a company’s worth based on concrete, measurable figures like assets and revenue. It takes into account only full-year profits and revenue from the past three years and the company’s assets and debts. By this GOBankingRates metric, Disney’s net worth is currently $148.59 billion.

Key Product Lines Contributing To Revenue

In the latest annual report, published in February 2023 for fiscal year 2022, Disney’s business segments and key product lines included the following.

Media and Entertainment Distribution

Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution is fully accountable for the financial results of the entire media and entertainment business, according to the annual report. It includes Disney, ESPN, Freeform, FX and National Geographic brands and networks, as well as studio entertainment and direct-to-consumer. Revenues from these brands come from affiliate fees, advertising and licensing fees for distribution.

Disney’s direct-to-consumer businesses include Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu. Disney also has branded international television networks and other digital content platforms. Revenues come from subscription fees, advertising, affiliate fees and licensing fees.

This operating segment also includes ABC brands for broadcast television and eight domestic television stations. Disney also owns a stake in A&E Television Networks. Additional businesses includes motion picture production for Walt Disney Pictures, Twentieth Century Studios, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, Searchlight Pictures and Blue Sky Studios banners.

Disney has other businesses that provide for the development, production and licensing of live entertainment events. The company also produces and distributes music.

Parks, Experiences and Consumer Products

Disney’s Parks, Experiences and Consumer Products business includes all of its theme parks and resorts. The company’s consumer products include licensing of trade names, characters and other intellectual property. In addition, Disney sells branded merchandise directly through retail, online and wholesale businesses. Revenues come from park admissions, merchandise, resorts and licensing deals.

Current Top Shareholders

According to Yahoo Finance, the largest institutional shareholders of Disney stock are:

• Vanguard Group Inc., 8.01% of shares
• Blackrock Inc., 6.60% of shares
• State Street Corp., 3.87% of shares

How Does the Future Look for Disney?

With Disney theme parks and Disney Cruise Lines fully open and video and movies back in production, Disney was off to a strong start at the beginning of 2022. In its Feb. 9 earnings release for the first quarter of 2022, it reported diluted earnings per share of $1.06 compared to 32 cents in the first quarter of 2021, coming in well ahead of analysts’ estimates of 63 cents, according to CNBC.

Revenue and new Disney+ subscriptions also exceeded expectations by wide margins. Disney shares surged 8% in extended trading after the earnings release.

2022 Financials

A disappointing third quarter led to a major shift in the company. Amid growing losses in its streaming business, which has yet to turn a profit, shares dropped precipitously, prompting the ouster of CEO Bob Chapek. Chapek had taken the helm upon Bob Iger’s retirement at the beginning of the pandemic. Iger came out of retirement to resume his role as CEO for two years.

In its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings release, Disney reported revenue increases of 9% and 23%, respectively. Although earnings per share were down $0.09 for the quarter, they rose from $2.29 to $3.53 for the full year. Strong Disney+ subscription growth continued, driven by quality content and an international service rollout, prompting Disney to confirm the streaming service should be profitable in fiscal year 2024.

In its earnings report for the first quarter of 2023 — the first since Iger’s return — Disney announced an 8% increase in revenues compared to Q1 2022, beating analysts’ estimates by a small margin, according to CNBC. Earnings per share reached $0.99, easily beating the $0.78 per share analyst’ had predicted. Disney+ subscribers also surprised analysts with smaller-than-expected losses. As for the stock, shares are up about 2.5% so far this year.

Looking Ahead

While the newest earnings report is generally positive, Iger said in a statement accompanying the earnings release that Disney is “embarking on a significant transformation, one that will maximize the potential of our world-class creative teams and our unparalleled brands and franchises. We believe the work we are doing to reshape our company around creativity, while reducing expenses, will lead to sustained growth and profitability for our streaming business, better position us to weather future disruption and global economic challenges, and deliver value for our shareholders.”

Among the measures Disney has in store is a layoff of 7,000 employees, which Iger announced during an earnings call. The workforce reduction is part of a $5.5 billion cost-cutting plan. Iger reiterated the company’s forecast that Disney+ will be profitable by 2024 but announced that Disney will no longer provide long-range guidance on memberships.

Disney obviously has a lot riding on the success of Disney+, but ESPN is a top priority, too — so much so that the company is breaking it out into its own operating segment. Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution will be renamed Disney Entertainment and keep ownership of the company’s full portfolio of entertainment, media and content businesses, Iger said.

Moving forward, the company plans to “focus even more on our core brands and franchises, which have consistently delivered higher returns.” Iger said Disney will also fine-tune advertising initiatives across streaming platforms in a push to “improve the economics of our streaming business,” which he called his No. 1 priority.

Is Disney Worth the Money?

While assessing value is sometimes a personal opinion, Disney certainly has a track record of success. The company owns the rights to some of the most well-known characters and brands in the world. There’s a reason why Disney is no. 7 on the Forbes World’s Most Valuable Brands 2020 list — its most recent.

Daria Uhlig contributed to the reporting for this article.

Information is accurate as of March 21, 2023.

Methodology: The GOBankingRates Evaluation assesses a company’s net worth based on the company’s total assets, total liabilities, and revenue and net income from the last three years. Base value is established by subtracting total liabilities from total assets from the company’s last full fiscal year. Income value is established by taking the average of the revenue from the last three full fiscal years, 10 times the average of the net profits from the last three full fiscal years, and then calculating the average of those two figures. The final GOBankingRates Evaluation number is the sum of the base value and the income value.