Disney Eyes Free Streaming, Eli Lilly Sells $15B of Weight-Loss Drugs

**Zaid Admani** (0:00)
Public.com presents The Rundown, your daily market update in 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Thursday, August 6th. In today's episode, we'll dig into why gold just had its biggest day since February. We'll also break down earnings from Disney, Eli Lilly, DoorDash and Sandisk. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why used electric cars are going up in value right now. We got a great show for you today.
Let's go.
Yesterday was a mixed day for the markets. The S&P 500 fell 0.2%, while the NASDAQ dropped by 0.8%, dragged down by Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Now the Dow Jones did finish a half a percent higher to another record close, but nobody cares about the Dow, so. You know, what caught my attention yesterday was gold. It jumped 4% for its biggest one-day gain since February. Gold is now back above $4,300 an ounce for the first time since June. Gold prices rallying right now could be a sign that traders don't think the Fed will raise interest rates this year. Higher interest rates is usually bad for gold since gold doesn't pay you anything to hold it. You don't get any interest or dividends. It's just a shiny metal that produces no yield. So this mini rally in gold right now could be the market saying that they don't think the Fed will hike interest rates despite Fed Chair Kevin Warsh talking tough on inflation. Now that could just be one factor though. The other factor could be that the dollar is weakening right now. And since gold is priced in US dollars, a weaker dollar tends to push up gold prices. And also there's still a strong demand from central banks all over the world which continue to buy up gold. According to Bloomberg, central banks and sovereign wealth funds bought a record 283 metric ton of gold during the second quarter, which was up 62% from a year ago. You know, all this demand from central banks was one of the reasons why gold rallied last year. And while gold isn't acting like a meme stock this year like it was last year, there seems to be a price floor right now because of all the central bank buying. So I'm curious to see what happens in the second half of the year when it comes to gold. Now, speaking of the Fed and interest rates, the July jobs report drops tomorrow morning and that could have an impact on what the Fed decides to do with interest rates. A strong job market could give the Fed cover to raise interest rates to combat inflation. But if the labor market starts showing signs of weakness and the Fed might be forced to hold rates or maybe even start cutting rates. So we'll break down the July jobs report on tomorrow's episode along with all the earnings coming out this week. So definitely get subscribed to the podcast if you haven't already and tune in every day to stay in the loop.
Let's run through some headlines starting with Disney. Disney reported earnings yesterday and the stock jumped nearly 4% following the report. The numbers were pretty decent. Revenues last quarter jumped 7% to $25.2 billion. That was a slight miss from estimates, but earnings per share did beat expectations coming in at $2.06 per share. The highlight of the report has to be the parks business. Disney's experienced division, which includes their parks, cruises and resorts, jumped 10% to nearly $10 billion in revenue, while operating income jumped 20% to just over $3 billion. So Disney's parks continued to put up strong growth numbers, despite the cost to attend these parks being so high these days. And even looking beyond parks, the streaming and movie business also did pretty well for Disney. Revenues from Disney Plus and Hulu increased 11% to $5.5 billion. That was helped by subscriber growth, price increases and advertising. And then the movie business also got a boost thanks to the success of Toy Story 5, which crossed a billion dollars at the box office. It wasn't all good for the movie business though. Live action Moana remake has been a major flop and so was the Mandalorian movie. Disney said the pain from those movies will be felt in the next quarter. Overall though, Disney's entertainment operating income still jumped 64% to $1.68 billion. So I'd say that it's been a good start for new CEO Josh Tamaro, who took over Disney back in March. No, he seems to have some interesting ideas as well moving forward. On the earnings call, he teased that Disney is considering launching a completely free ad supported streaming product to reach customers who don't want another monthly subscription. So think of it like Disney's version of Pluto or Tubi, but filled with Disney's enormous library of movies, shows and IP. And honestly, I think this is a good idea. Josh Tamaro also said on the earnings call that he wants Disney Plus to expand and not just be home for content, but also gaming and merchandise and also their parks. So he wants to turn Disney Plus into like a super app. I'm not sure if I like that idea as much. I kind of just want Disney Plus to be like the content app, but we'll see what he ends up doing with it. Overall, the market liked what they heard from the earnings report. The stock jumped nearly 4% following the report. But if you zoom out though, Disney stock is still down about 10% on the year and it's still down about 50% from its all time highs the stock set back in 2021 I wonder if Disney's ever gonna get back to those 2021 levels.