Disney CEO Bob Iger: Password Sharing Crackdown Part of Path to Profitability

Disney CEO Bob Iger sat down for an interview with Squawk on the Streetto discuss Disney’s path to profitability since his return, including a detail many users won’t like.

“We’ve done really well in terms of streaming.”, said Iger. “In a very, very short period of time we find ourselves second to Netflix, in terms of global subscribers for a pure streaming business. We know that we ended up losing a lot of money on that, more so than we expected initially. Part of that was because we were chasing some growth and not as focused as we needed to be on the bottom line.”

Iger goes on to say that Disney was losing a whopping $4 billion per year when he rejoined the company. Calling that scenario “not sustainable and not acceptable,” Iger set the goal of becoming profitable in fiscal Q4 ’24. The CEO says Disney has already dramatically cut losses, to roughly $130 million last quarter.

“We know exactly how we delivered that improvement, now what we have to do is turn it into not just a profitable business, but a growth business, a business that has margins that this company and our shareholders would really be proud of,” Iger added.

When pressed, Iger agrees with the host that Disney will eventually be able to achieve double-digit growth, with customer engagement being the key.

“It is very, very clear that we need more engagement, in terms of consumers spending time on the platform,” Iger continued. “We just launched…Hulu on Disney+…and I can tell you it is doing extremely well….But we feel great about the engagement of those Disney subs who were not getting Hulu, who are now watching more programs that were on Hulu.”

Iger goes on to say that Disney needs to continue improving its technology, using better recommendation engines to help viewers discover and engage with new content. He also emphasized the importance of reducing the cost to acquire and maintain customers and reduce churn.

In the midst of listing various measures, Iger took aim at password sharing specifically.

“Password sharing is something else,” Iger said. “In June we’ll be launching our first real foray into password sharing, in just a few countries in a few markets. But then it will grow significantly with a full roll-out in September….All of that, obviously, all the things I mentioned are components of what will turn this business that we feel really good about.”