Hi, 3 charts for you today:
On the list of businesses you'd like not to own during a pandemic, theme parks would rank pretty high, maybe just below airlines.
And so for media giant Disney, the early days of the pandemic were brutal for its Parks, Experiences & Products division — during its worst quarter, revenue was down by a whopping 85%. But things are bouncing back, just in time for the company's 100th birthday next year.
Indeed, yesterday Disney reported revenue of $7.2bn for the division, just a few percentage points below its 2020 effort thanks to visitors going all-out on their visits.
When in Disneyland... go big
According to Disney's CFO, spending per person at Disney's US parks was up more than 40% versus early 2019 thanks to more premium ticket sales as well as higher food, beverage, and merchandise spending. Visitors are making up for lost time, and they're spending big to do so.
Advantage, Disney
The other good news for Disney was in its streaming biz. Disney took a solid step towards catching Netflix, announcing 12 million new subscribers to Disney+, almost double what analysts were expecting.
That update leaves Disney in a good spot to meet its 230-260m Disney+ subscriber goal by the end of 2024. It also means that once you account for Hulu and ESPN+ (both of which Disney owns), the company as a whole is over 196 million subscribers, not far off Netflix's 222m total.
Note: Amazon Prime Video has 200 million+ subscribers, but we've omitted it from this chart. Only 11% of people gave the streaming service as their primary reason for having Amazon Prime, the overwhelming majority (79%) are in it primarily for the one-day delivery.
When economic data is completely acceptable dinner party conversation, it's probably doing something unusual or scary. And that's exactly where we are with inflation.
Yesterday the latest data hit the tape, with the Consumer Price Index up 7.5% on this time last year - another 40-year record jump.
A tale of two trends
Rising prices can be a scary self-perpetuating cycle. Prices go up, so firms raise prices in response, which makes other prices go up and so on and so forth. The big lever that the Federal Reserve has is the Federal Funds interest rate, which can help restrict, or expand, the amount of credit in the economy — but interest rates remain anchored to historic lows, just above zero.
That's not going to be the case forever, and investors are quickly shifting their expectations. Investors have been expecting two, maybe three, rate hikes this year, but this latest data has investors wondering whether the Fed might do a "double hike" at the next meeting, which would raise interest rates by 0.5%, instead of the more usual 0.25% bump. The last time the Fed did a double hike? May 2000.
1) Gazump, tippex, chipolata, biro. Fascinating list of British words that Americans statistically know the least (and vice versa).
2) Uber made more revenue last quarter by delivering food ($2.4bn) than it did delivering people($2.3bn). More here.
3) European scientists have announced a major breakthrough in their bid to develop fusion energy, generating 59 megajoules of energy over 5 seconds.
4) Americans are set to eat more than 1.4 billion chicken wings on Super Bowl game day on Sunday, which is a steady 4.5 wingsper person in the country.
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6) France has announced plans to build up to 14new nuclear reactors.
7) 104-year-old media brand Forbes is getting a $200m investment from cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
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