In 2023, some of the world's largest media companies received mixed reviews.
Let's start with the good aspects:
According to data from Box Office Mojo, a box office statistics website, global box office revenue increased by 21% in 2023 to $8.9 billion. The highest-grossing films include Warner Bros. Discovery's Barbie ($1.4 billion worldwide), Universal Pictures' The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($1.4 billion) and Oppenheimer ($975 million).
While none of these films have been able to shake the pre-pandemic status of "Black Panther," which set a box office record of $11.9 billion when it was released in 2018, they also show a strong recovery from the industry's strong recovery since the pandemic hit in 2020, when the box office plummeted 80% to $2.1 billion.
1. Two of the world's top three grossing films came from Comcast, the world's largest media company and the parent company of Universal Pictures, which helped it reach No. 40 on the Forbes Global 2000 list (G2000), up 11 places from last year.
As a result of these successes, Comcast's share price has risen 29% in the last year. The performance of the media industry as a whole can also be said to be remarkable. On an equally-weighted basis, the 20 media companies on the G2000 list returned an average of 28 percent, slightly higher than the S&P 500's 26 percent. Leading the way was DraftKings (1,993) with a 209% return, followed by Netflix (212) with a 65% return.
Let's talk about the bad ones:
2. A number of media executives, including David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, had expected the TV advertising market to pick up in the second half of last year, but the market remained sluggish. At an investor conference in November 2022, Zaslav lamented that the advertising business was worse than during the pandemic.
Thanks to its sports-oriented programming, FOX, the world's eighth-largest media company, stood out from its peers, with TV ad revenue down just 1.6 percent. Warner Bros. Discovery, which ranked No. 6, saw a 13% year-over-year decline in TV advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2023. Paramount Global, the world's 10th largest media company, and NBC, a Comcast company, saw their TV advertising revenues fall by 14 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively.
3. Warner Bros. Discovery slipped 144 spots (now 673) on the G2000 list, Fox dropped 95 places (now 814), and Paramount slipped 209 places (now 1,066).
Forbes used FactSet data to select the world's largest public companies, starting with four data on assets, market capitalization, sales and profits. Market capitalization data is updated as of May 17 and includes all shares of common stock outstanding.
4. Walt Disney Co., which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, has seen the most significant regression, falling from 87th last year to 155th this year.
5. Also falling from last year's Top 100 list were pharmaceutical giants Pfizer Inc. (down 397 places) and Merck & Co. (down 89 places) and Italy's oil giant Eni S.p.A (down 70 places).
Part of Disney's poor performance is due to the difficulties in its production department.
虽然全球票房收入整体向好，但迪士尼工作室（Disney’s studio）却仍身陷泥淖。 据好莱坞商业出版物Deadline报道，去年5部最失败影片中就有4部来自于迪士尼：《惊奇队长2》（The Marvels）亏损了2.37亿美元，《夺宝奇兵：命运转盘》（Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny）亏损1.43亿美元，《星愿》（Wish）亏损1.31亿美元，《幽灵鬼屋》（The Haunted Mansion）亏损了1.17亿美元。
For Disney's film industry, this year-high hit directly caused the company's net profit in the past fiscal year (ending September 2023) to fall by 26% year-on-year. Except for 2020, which was affected by the epidemic, this data set a new high for the annual decline in the company's net profit since 2001. In 2001, Disney's advertising revenue and theme park attendance declined due to the 9/11 attacks. Excluding unusual events like the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, last year was the company's biggest drop in net profit since 1994, according to FactSet.
In an effort to keep the company on track, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced on the company's third-quarter earnings call last year that it would reduce its budget for movie distribution in the future.
"We're now fully committed to improving the quality and economics of our films, not only by reducing the number of films we release, but also by reducing the cost of shooting each film," said Eagle. ”
And such a cloud seems to hang over the whole of Hollywood. ProdPro, an analytics firm that observes television and film production, reported in May that spending on film and television production had fallen 50% year-on-year over the past 12 months. This is partly due to the wave of strikes by Hollywood screenwriters last year, but it also reflects the tightening of production costs by studios.
This article is translated from:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonkochkodin/2024/06/13/the-worlds-largest-media-companies-2024-disney-charter-communications-and-warner-bros-discovery-all-fall/
文：Brandon Kochkodin
翻译:Sunny&Bella
Proofreading: Vivian
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