weve seen bob iger return what do you make of these numbers do you think that magic has returned to the house of mouse i dont know if i would call it magic just yet but i think bob iger is breathing a sigh of relief and so are many disney investors it was a better than expected quarter on many levels definitely i mean you pointed out the top line the bottom line both ahead of expectations and even the loss of subscribers was not as steep as some expected and a lot of that was driven by price hikes so i think they expected that to happen more importantly i think that iger has laid out a vision for getting this streaming operation closer to profitability i think the target is to make it profitable by fiscal 2024 theres still a lot of challenges ahead so i dont think we can you know i dont think they can fully declare victory right now but its certainly a step in the right direction do you think thats enough of a step to get close to breaking by 2024 as being a feasible one and what i guess what is the equity story for disney right now is it one of growing subscribers or is that one about getting closer to profitability it is no longer about growing subscribers i mean obviously they dont want to lose subscribers but really the focus has shifted to profitability not just for disney but for virtually every competitor in the streaming business netflix has gone out of its way to say that theyve shifted focus from subscriber growth to profitability and the same is happening across the whole industry its just a function of competition its a function of macroeconomic headwinds and a lot of other factors that are weighing against that business so i think disney can get there but definitely if its a question of focusing on growing that user base or getting to profitability its definitely the latter at this point and the corporate restructuring ideas put forth today whether its a job cuts cost cuts if youre getting close to that ideal for investors to stay bullish on disney we have seen the market reaction after hours at least be positive yeah i mean i think bob iger is trying to refocus disney around more of a creative approach which is what disney has always been theyve always been a company about content about those great brands about storytelling so i think hes trying to consolidate things to where creative people will have more agency in decision making which is i think what the companys dna is whether thats ultimately going to please investors well see what happens quarter to quarter you know this was a good quarter for them but theyre definitely going to be facing a lot of competition in all of the businesses they operate in especially on the entertainment side so it remains to be seen its still a hit driven business so one quarter you may have a great theatrical head or a tv or a streaming hit next quarter you might not you might invest in something that doesnt meet expectations so it will be dependent on how those winds blow but but in general i think what iger has done and what he announced today is definitely moving closer to where disney should be and where investors want them to be in fact lets take a listen to what bob iger had to say when it comes to the creative side of things we will aggressively curate our general entertainment content we will reassess all markets we launched in and also determine the right balance between global and local content well adjust our pricing strategy including a full examination of our promotional strategies paul where does hulu stand in the broader disney strategy and why should it do with its stake there well theres clearly going to be a big decision to make about hulu whether to buy the remaining or that the rest of the company that it doesnt own or spin it off my sense is that they will buy hulu and either fold it into disney plus as a streaming service or keep it as an independent brand i dont think theres a lot of appetite at disney for spinning off large parts of its portfolio they specifically shot down the idea of selling espn which activist investor dan loeb had called for back in the fall of last year and while they didnt address whether they would spin off hulu at some point bob iger did make a comment about how abbott elementary flows very nicely from linear tv where the median viewing age is up you know up close to 60 you know its 60 years old and then conversely on hulu its closer to you know somewhere around 30 or 30 plus so i think theres a nice synchronicity or synergy between the viewing audiences they complement each other so i think that hulu plays an important role in that entertainment portfolio with the tv and streaming content especially because a lot of it flows from the linear to the streaming platform so i think it fits nicely within disney but between now and the end of the year a lot of things can happen so if disney finds itself in a more distressed situation financially then i suppose it would be on the table to sell hulu but i wouldnt bet on that happening does today change the way that investors should vote come april on nelson peltz should he be given a seat or is this enough evidence that theyre back on track well i think that a lot of the decisions that disney has made and that they announced today actually align with what peltz has been calling for you know hes key wanted them to rein in costs which disney is doing he wanted them to focus the streaming operation around profitability which it is also doing he did want them to do a better job with succession planning than they did last time thats something that disney did not specifically address today but i expect that in the coming months that something will happen or they will make some announcement along the lines of succession planning because i think they got caught with doing it in a very sloppy way last time around and i dont think that they can afford to do that now so in some ways i think disney has effectively neutralized peltz hes not the kind of person whos going to go away easily so we may not have heard the end of this story but as of right now what i see is that disney has done a lot of the things that were raised by peltz not because peltz raised them necessarily but because thats what the business demands right now