Analyst Downgrades Disney Stock, Anticipates No New Movie Releases in 2020 Fiscal Year
With COVID-19 cases surging across much of the United States, an analyst who specializes in Disney, has downgraded his rating on Disney stock. In addition to the stock being downgraded, he does not see new movies being released for the rest of the 2020 fiscal year, per The Hollywood Reporter.
Cowen analyst, Doug Creutz, has reviewed current COVID-19 trends and think social distancing measures in the United States will be extended instead of being scaled back by the end of the year. Due to this, he has downgraded Disney stock from an “ourperformer” to “market perform” with stock price target changing from $101 to $97.


Image Credit: Disney
Creutz said, “We had previously assumed that the spread of COVID-19 would be relatively halted, with social distancing requirements significantly lessened by late 2020. We have now extended that timeline out to at least mid-2021; the situation remains very fluid, and we do not rule out the possibility that the impact could last even longer.”
In addition, Creutz does not see any new film releases in the 2020 fiscal year. (Disney’s fiscal year ends on September 26, 2020.) He stated, “We now expect domestic theaters to be largely closed until mid-2021, in part because we don’t think studios will be interested in releasing their largest movies into a capacity-constrained footprint.”


Image Credit: Disney
Disney has already pushed back the release of Mulan twice. It is currently scheduled to be released in August.
As you are most likely aware, all four of Walt Disney World’s theme parks are now open at limited capacity. Greutz thinks Parks will operate at reduced capacity for about another year. While Downtown Disney is open at the Disneyland Resort, the Disneyland Parks are still closed with no reopening date announced.


Photo: Disney
The Disney analyst also said it might take several years for domestic Parks’ pre-COVID numbers to return. He said, “We now expect domestic park profitability to return to fiscal year 2019 levels in fiscal year 2025.”
Remember that this is all just projections at this time. A few months ago another Disney analyst predicted that domestic Disney Parks would not be reopening until 2021 and look how that aged. Hopefully things will turn around soon so stock prices will increase and new Disney movies will be released!
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