keybanc capital markets analyst brandon nispel sees “meaningful uncertainty” for walt disney co’s stock one reason he’s downgrading the media name nispel has various concerns about disney dis  including that expectations for its parks business seem too high and that the company faces a daunting journey as it contemplates a standalone streaming future for its flagship espn service don’t miss disney is about to face its ‘biggest decision yet’ over espn’s future “while this note might call the bottom we have our doubts” he wrote in a note to clients as he lowered his rating on the stock to sector weight from overweight late wednesday he added that he and his team “prefer to step aside acknowledging meaningful uncertainty and wait for further catalysts as buying the dip has been a losing trade” see also disney’s story gets ‘another wrinkle’ as cfo transition adds to laundry list of uncertainties within the parks business nispel looked at domestic geolocation data for disney and universal theme park and he determined some florida weakness for the first two months of the quarter meanwhile walt disney world will be compared to a yearago period in which it celebrated its 50th anniversary “we worry the ‘tough comps’ are not properly reflected in consensus” nispel wrote the company could face other challenges in parks including around margins given a new labor contract in florida read disney stock sentiment has ‘deteriorated’ but this analyst says not all hope is lost as for the company’s streaming business nispel took the view that the entertainment giant hasn’t done enough to differentiate itself in a way that improves performance on churn or the portion of consumers who opt to leave the service “while dis has started to drive pricing we have yet to see dis services separate from peers from a churn standpoint… though it arguably has had a bundling advantage” he wrote “we believe this speaks more to the structural element of churn within the industry that is unlikely to go away” the company “is likely to need to monetize existing subscribers better through price increases while establishing a lowerpriced subscription advertising tier to retain subs” nispel continued read disney’s streaming opportunity might be misunderstood here’s why he had further concerns about the company’s roadmap as it reportedly evaluates how to make espn into a standalone streaming service that evolution could wind up “materially harder than we initially thought” he noted since disney allocates about 30 of its 30 billion content budget to sports he said he thinks the breakeven price for such a service would be 33 a month but his survey work has left him with doubts that many consumers will pay that price “we believe this level of arpu average revenue per user seems highly unlikely where these data points make us cautious as dis’s cash cow may have a worse future in streaming vs linear than we originally anticipated” nispel wrote more from marketwatch the best streaming services in july 2023 are hulu and apple and here’s why he also had questions about bigbudget films noting the recent weak performances of “lightyear” and “elemental” from pixar those poor showings seem to reflect “less of an animationsuperhero slump at the box office and more of a structural reality that consumers will expect to watch this type of content at home” he commented nispel titled that section of his note “are the days of 200m productions done” he said that disney may need to “fundamentally rethink its content creation strategy”