Walt Disney Co (NYSE: DIS) is trading up this morning after the entertainment conglomerate announced a “targeted hiring freeze” and revealed plans of “some job cuts”.
What CEO Bob Chapek said in an internal memo
The news is not entirely surprising, though. Last week, executives on the earnings call already disclosed commitment to cutting costs. Confirming the hiring freeze now and potential layoffs in an internal memo, CEO Bob Chapek said:
“Hiring for the small subset of most critical, business-driving positions will continue, but all other roles are on hold. We’ll look at every avenue of operations and labour to find savings, and we do anticipate some staff reductions.”
Disney added a whopping 12.1 million subscribers to its flagship streaming platform but its overall profit and revenue in Q4 was shy of street estimates (read more).
At the end of its fourth financial quarter, the multinational had about 190,000 employees in total.
Jim Cramer shares his outlook on the Disney stock
The Burbank-headquartered firm has had a terrible 2022. Disney stock is currently down about 40% for the year – a sharp decline that particularly affected Jim Cramer.
“I screwed up. I’ve made a mistake. Not a good answer. Better answer would’ve been, I got rid of it. But my Charitable Trust still owns it.”
Interestingly, though, Cramer is still “bullish on the mass media company and, in fact, found it smart to buy Disney stock on the recent weakness. Explaining why on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street”, he said:
Disney is the greatest of all these media franchises. If it’s better run, it would have a better move. If you had serious changes, you’d see Disney much higher. I don’t want to give up and then discover that a new person is at the helm and the stock is at $120.