Leisure/entertainment industry

I need to find out how the above industry is doin, specifically theme parks, disney etc. Any layoff? Any help is much appreciated. thanks.

Mickey and Minnie just got axed. No severance.

are you kidding or not?

one word: cyclical

so i dont get it. it seems that this industry is doing ok considering the siatuation. no layoffs and no scaling back either. is this just another sign that the crises is made-up? ok so let me ask you this: have you or anyone you know, decided not to go to disney because of the financial mess?

I have heard people are cutting back on ski weekends. Maybe only one trip this year with the kids instead of two.

its pretty easy to think of whats going on… if you’re defaulting on your mortgage, or even if you are deliquent, i doubt you are thinking of going on vacation… as for rich people… they might decide on barbados over bora bora this year as joe 6 figures would rather have money for investments or cash for a rainy day… if you’re afraid of being unemployed, you probably won’t be going on trips either… i don’t think the leisure industry is very proactive in laying people off and the bulk of our ‘market crisis’ (ie. huge decline) was only 2 months prior to now so i don’t think people would have been cancelling vacations a week or two before they were going to take them. You will see less reservations made starting december, and they will continue to decline until at least 2010… at that point, leisure facilities will downsize… if the banking sector, telecom sector, IT sector and every other sector didn’t see this coming, the leisure sector definitely won’t do anything about it (ie. job cuts, etc) until they have to as well…

Disney’s running a mickey mouse operation at this point. Their balance sheet is pure fantasy and their forecasts are just plain goofy. In all seriousness, they recently reported lower visits to their theme parks. If you won’t go to the happiest place on earth, where will you go.

Disney’s advertising all kinds of specials right now…but I’m not sure about layoffs. I’m sure the industry will take a big hit.

Disney considering layoffs Oct 31, 2008 Disney executives have been holding meetings in anticipation of a possible economic recession. While not confirmed by Disney, one of the measures being discussed is job cuts in all divisions of the company. The President of ABC News, David Westin, issued a staff memo instructing them “to make sure we have all the resources we need to cover the news” while implementing cost cutting measures. This includes flying “one grade below what they’re entitled to” and to “stay in ‘B’ level hotels.” The News department is canceling all magazine and newspaper subscriptions and there will be no holiday parties scheduled this year. Disney’s Co-Chair of Disney Media Networks, Anne Sweeney, has asked her staff for cost saving recommendations should the economy warrant it. It’s been reported that other Disney departments have been given similar instructions. Universal previously announced that it is cutting its budget by 3%, a $500 million decrease in spending, in response to “unprecedented economic challenges”.

ASCA, a regional casino operator, is trading 3x forward free cash flow, which is just absolutley dirt cheap. MGM just sold bonds priced at 15%. the industry is hurting very bad, but its not going away, it generates way too much cash

I’m very hesitant here. . . the over-building and over-leveraging of these casinos is ridiculous and factor in the consumer driven reccession. . . you get a recipe for disaster. Forward free cash flow afterall is an estimate with high uncertainty that is under considerable pressure.

no doubt justpass, with everything being so “cheap” here, leisure names are probably not the best place to allocate your capital