Asked whether Disney’s layoffs last month of about 1,000 workers could be followed by more cutbacks, executives said Wednesday the company is exploring all options as it builds “a culture of efficiency.”
Newly minted CEO Josh D’Amaro and CFO Hugh Johnston fielded questions about cost savings, staffing and artificial intelligence during the company’s quarterly earnings call with Wall Street analysts.
D’Amaro largely focused on uses of AI to improve the creative process and the guest experience at theme parks, leaving Johnston to provide the primary outlook on the workforce. One analysts noted the April cuts, per a question read aloud by call moderator and investor relations chief Ben Swinburne, and wondered, “How big is the opportunity as you take a fresh look at the operations? Where is there the most room for improvement?”
Johnston replied, “These are always difficult exercises for the organization, but let me assure you, this management team is acutely focused on this.”
He said the company is looking to shift expenses toward content and technology, which are “areas that we expect to drive growth.” Last month’s staff reductions “reflect a deliberate shift toward a more agile, technologically enabled and resilient workforce,” he added.
Declining to offer any projections of the numbers of workers or business areas that could be affected in the future, Johnston described the efficiency drive as “an ongoing exercise and a muscle we’re building.”
Disney, he continued, is looking to “build a culture of efficiency and we want to fund growth opportunities from within the existing expense base. Across the company, where aligning structures, capabilities, and talent to what the business needs next, we’re simplifying where we can while investing where it matters most, and we’re using technology to fundamentally change how work gets done. We have been and will continue to look for these types of opportunities to redeploy capital, both financial and human, to areas we see driving the highest returns for shareholders.”
AI is ushering in dramatic changes to the way many companies are thinking of their operations and staffing needs, as the Wall Street Journal noted Wednesday. Technology, combined with consolidation and declines in U.S.-based production and linear TV viewing, has created a challenging environment for entertainment workers. D’Amaro’s predecessor at Disney, Bob Iger, oversaw the layoffs of thousands of Disney workers, with the streamlining matched by cuts across the industry.
Hollywood has watched closely as the tech sector has made aggressive downsizing moves, with companies like Meta Platforms, Snap, Coinbase and PayPal all announcing double-digit staff cuts. In the wake of Meta decision last month to let go of 10% of its workforce, “we don’t really know what the optimal size of the company will be in the future,” CFO Susan Li told investors on an earnings call.
Disney’s review of workforce productivity is “focused across several areas,” Johnston said. “One of the ones I find particularly interesting is an initiative to implement precision labor demand forecasting across our theme parks. We think that one has the potential to create a better guest experience, a better employment experience, and also better cost management for the company. So we’re very excited about that.”
He also noted opportunities across “enterprise operations” at Disney. “As is true with really many, many companies, the pathways to both drive efficiency and reduce costs are really quite numerous across the enterprise.”
