Bob Iger says there are 'untapped stories just waiting to be brought to life' at Disney Parks with $42 billion going to expand capacity

Speaking at today's Q1 2024 earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Iger commented on the future of the company's theme park business.

Iger said, "Every one of our parks was profitable in Q1, giving us an incredibly solid foundation to build upon as we invest significantly to turbocharge growth in this business."

He continued, "As I've said before, we also have so many untapped stories just waiting to be brought to life in our parks across the globe as we continue to invest in this extraordinary business."

Bob Iger says there are 'untapped stories just waiting to be brought to life' at Disney Parks

New Disney CFO Hugh Johnston expanded on future investments, saying, "We plan to invest approximately $60 billion into the business over the next 10 years, of which approximately 70% is earmarked for incremental capacity expanding investments around the globe, which we expect to attractive returns."

Disney announced last year its plans to accelerate and expand investment in its Parks, Experiences and Products segment to nearly double capital expenditures over the course of approximately 10 years to roughly $60 billion, including by investing in expanding and enhancing domestic and international parks and cruise line capacity.

Speaking in April 2023 at the Walt Disney Company Annual shareholder meeting, Disney CEO Bob Iger said that Disney plans to spend $17 billion over the next ten years, specifically at Walt Disney World, bringing 13,000 new jobs to the area.

In terms of timing, Iger said that the company is already hard at work at determining where new investments will be placed and what they will be. New additions will start opening in 2025, and there will be a cadence of additional investment and increased capacity every year.

In response to an analyst question about where and when we will see new investments, Iger said, "You can pretty much conclude that they will be all over, meaning every single one of our locations will be the beneficiary of increased investment and thus, increased capacity, including on the high seas where we're currently building three more ships and a business that is obviously extremely positive to us. We may look expansively in that direction. I'm not going to give you more of a sense of timing except that we're hard at work at getting these things basically conceived and built."