Disney theme parks are surprisingly vacant this summer due to high ticket costs and ‘woke’ outrage, but here’s why the stock may be too cheap to pass up.
Travel experts have seen a drop in the number of people going to Disney’s theme parks, which is odd for the summer. Touring Plans, a company that tracks how long people have to wait for rides at different theme parks, says that the wait times at Disney World in Orlando and Disneyland in California have gotten faster in the past few weeks.
Touring Plans found that the average wait time for a Disney ride during the holidays was 27 minutes this year, down from 31 minutes in 2022 to 47 minutes in 2019.
In a recent quarterly report, Disney’s management team had already lowered its estimate of how much the parks would make. Now that the parks are giving deals for Christmas, they could expect the drop in attendance to continue into one of their busiest times of the year.
Everyone, where are you?
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, said on Monday’s Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show that Disney’s “woke agenda” was why the theme park wasn’t selling many tickets. DeSantis and the entertainment giant have been fighting for a long time over how schools teach about sex and gender identity. Conservatives who back DeSantis have been trying to get people to stop going to the parks and using the company’s streaming service.
But the numbers show that isn’t the only thing going on here. Recent statistics show that Universal Park, a competitor of Disney that hasn’t been involved in the ongoing culture war, had its lowest attendance ever on Independence Day. Six Flags and SeaWorld have seen fewer visitors in the past few months.
With a recession on the horizon and Americans saving less, they may want to save money on something other than expensive family trips like theme parks. The Federal Reserve found that American families had used up all of their extra savings from the time of the pandemic.
Travel planners have said that higher ticket prices are a big reason why fewer people go to theme parks. On top of that, Florida has been in a scorching spell, and trips to Europe are cutting into the demand for local theme parks this year. Both of these things are likely to blame for the downturn.
But it could be an excellent chance for investors no matter why Disney is having a terrible, horrible, no good, awful season.
Here are seven great one-week trips you can take for around $1,000.
Now is a cheap time to buy Disney stock.
In March 2021, the highest price for Disney stock (NYSE: DIS) was $197. It has dropped 56% since then. It is now being sold at the same price as at the beginning of 2015.
With Bob Iger back as CEO and layoffs in place, the company may have been able to cut costs enough to make up for lower demand. Iger has also said that Disney’s bonus payments, which were stopped in 2020, could start up again. On the other hand, analysts think that the average annual income will go up by 20% in the next three to five years.
The stock’s price-to-earnings ratio is 39.95, which could be justified if the double-digit growth goal for earnings is met.
