OFFICIAL NEWS A Lasting Record Of TLJ's Financial Performance.

@ScumAndVillainy
In case you haven't attended such reports, or been involved in ebitda type information, here's the definition of a quarterly report:

http://www.investinganswers.com/fin...cial-statement-analysis/quarterly-report-2475

This is the standard treatment of quarterly reports.
If you walk into a Q1 2018 report and start talking about a comparison to Q3 2014, or Q1 2016 because that's the last time you launched a similar product, no one will be asking you to deliver a quarterly report again, and you probably won't have your current job position beyond the week because you would have shown a complete lack of understanding for norms and expectations of the marketplace financial obligations and reporting.

Quarterly reports always compare to the previous year's same quarter, and not a similar asset regardless of quarter and year fitting.


Regardless of all of this, the point stands: Disney is happy with TLJ financially, and their report is not a report which hides discussion about shortfalls and failures of assets, as noted in their mentions of failures and shortfalls in other assets within their same quarterly report.
In fact, if you fail to mention shortfalls and failures in a quarterly report, you can get into some pretty big trouble, and in fact, you won't be retaining your position in respect to finances of the company because boards are not idiots when it comes to money, and they want to hear the failures and shortfalls and if you don't have any, then you have a LOT of explaining to do if you don't have a gain over the prior year's same quarter to show for absolutely no losses or shortfalls.
Which is why you see Disney outlining what failed and what didn't in the distribution section since it only had a 1% growth over the same quarter last year (due to home media distributions, again, as explained in the report).

They could have blamed the shortfall on TLJ if they felt that was accurate, but they didn't. They placed the shortfall where the money said there was; home media distribution...not TLJ.
TLJ was listed as one of the assets which helped to offset the shortfall from home media distribution, and an asset which was pleasing in earnings.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Note the words 'typically', along with 'any other pertinent information related to the company and its business'. As I stated, its not hardcoded and you can include anything you want to give investors warm fuzzies about your stock. Had TLJ done very well and performed near-record numbers against TFA or even exceeded expectations, they would have mentioned that in a heartbeat. They would have been crowing it from the mountaintops.

In other words, you still get the comparison to RO, but then they would mention that revenue exceeded expectations and was due to the overperformance of TLJ vs the record results of TFA in Q1 2016, the movie it directly followed, along with exceeding internal estaimates, and likely a mention that this bodes well for the final film in the trilogy with Episode 9 in 2019. Once again, its a quarterly report to investors of the earnings(which is a dry spreadsheet) and how they're Great Great Great, not a hardcoded thing. You're trying to put the best spin possible on how you did so your stock hopefully goes up. You try to minimize(or spin, but not lie) any bad information.

But because TLJ failed miserably to meet any type of expectations, comparing anything to TFA would have been problematic, and subsequently they didn't even bother, leaving just the comparison against RO.

As per inside baseball with EBITDA and all that... just lol. We're talking the quarterly earnings reports(in particular the summaries, not the spreadsheet) given to investors, nothing more. I realize your need to change the subject from TLJ's poor performance to the business world, but lets stay on topic.

 

Believe what you want, I suppose, but you are factually incorrect.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

False.

 

So, in your world, official reports are meaningless.
Comparing using percentages are meaningless.
The ONLY thing that matters is comparing ROI to ROI of the movie that came right before it.

Which contradicts your previous two "meaninglessnesses" because that is, in fact, a percentage comparison on a report.

 

BS much?

 

@ScumAndVillainy
If Disney had needed to note that there was a windfall to account for with TLJ it would have looked like this:

Or this:

Yet, even here in the Q1 2017 report, where TFA does come in as a comparison properly because it is the last asset of comparison to that same quarter the year prior, they don't think that RO did bad, but instead note that TFA performed exceptionally.

No fiscal accounting is going to set a bar for a performance to be acceptable based on an over-performance of a prior asset in a comparable quarter from the previous year. Ever.
It won't happen because that would make several business' appear as if they are about to head for bankruptcy when they aren't.
If you looked at when the first iPhone was released and jumped a year later, no one would look at the huge boom in sales on the release of the first iPhone as the bar that must be hit and anything short of that being under-performing. That's not how finance works in business.

An over-performance is a reason to cheer and you take it for what it is; an over-performance.

TFA was huge.

The highest quarter in Disney's entire history is not the new bar that all subsequent assets must hit to avoid being classed as under-performing.

Under-performing would be Disney stating something like: 'The decrease in theatrical distribution reflects the performance of Star Wars: The Last Jedi in the current quarter...'

That's not what Disney had to say about TLJ.
Disney at no point outlined a low performance being linked to TLJ.
It was linked to home media and TV/SVOD distribution. None of their theatrical assets were considered to be linked to the decrease in the Studio Entertainment earnings.

And they regularly state when an asset performed lower than desired and/or was party to an overall reduction in earnings.
You can pick any of their quarterly reports up, as they are all public, and sift through and see plenty of discussion regarding reductions and lower earnings and their causes. They have, do, and will list assets that do not perform to desired ranges.
They want to make money, and they want to track and target what does and doesn't work. They are not going to pad the books (which is illegal, btw) and not report losses and reductions from expectations (also illegal, btw) in earnings reports.

If TLJ was a flawed asset that just didn't work, then:
A) They would have stated that it did not perform as well as they had hoped.
B) Rian Johnson would NOT be highlighted as being given an entire trilogy which he is now developing "for us".

There's no moving of goalposts in stating any of this, and no one is changing the topic.

The topic is whether or not TLJ under-performed.
Well, THE only agency capable of actually objectively answering that is Disney because their goals were the only goals which mattered for the measure of under-performance or not, and Disney does NOT state TLJ under-performed, but instead listed it as a success.

The only way to maintain the position that TLJ under-performed is by taking up a position that Disney is lying because they need to look good, and that is a criminal charge as it is illegal to cover-up under-performances in quarterly earnings for publicly traded companies.

So, if you or anyone set a bar at some arbitrary point and TLJ didn't hit that. Great. Then is under-performed YOUR expectation...not Disney's.

To the question: DID TLJ UNDER-PERFORM?
No.
Why?
Disney said so.

Cheers,
Jayson[/quote]

 

Week 12 ended on Thursday, March 8, 2018.


(click link or image to enlarge)

Notes:
For the first time since the 4 week screen mandate expired, during weeks 11 & 12 TLJ played in more theaters than RO did. During Week 12 the theater count gap became bigger.
Black Panther third week take ahead of TLJ, Jurassic World, and The Avengers; only below The Force Awakens and Avatar.

 

Yes.
Why?
Because you're having to explain and rationalize quarterly reports to 'prove it'.

I'm pretty sure you didn't have to do that in 2015 or 2016.

And we're still where we were, with Solo and 9 telling the tale if the underperformance of TLJ did lasting damage to the brand, or they're able to bounce back. And make no mistake, if those go belly up(relatively speaking), its 8 that people will point to where the first massive hit was taken.

Also make no mistake, if they go the other way and are smash hits, fanbois will be like... WE KNEW STAR WARS COULD BOUNCE BACK.

 

The only reason I had to explain the quarterly report is because you understood it incorrectly and made factually incorrect claims about their content, meaning, and Disney's statements.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

"Your argument is invalid because you provided proof."

 

Disney was able to mitigate some of the decline of TLJ with a ticket % cash grab:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney...heaters-on-star-wars-the-last-jedi-1509528603

 

Very interesting read.

Also interesting that that article predicted TLJ would meet 500 million for domestic box office.......a prediction that the film definitely exceeded.

Just one example (of plenty) of a pre-release gross prediction that the film beat, despite certain forum users saying that TLJ failed and did not meet a single box office prediction.

 

Now that we're out of the initial 3-week run, we can look at the legs of say TLJ and how badly it performed without the holidays to buttress its totals.

Black Panther(4th weekend, estimated) : $41.1 million
TLJ(4th weekend) : $23.7 million

Almost double.

I think we can pretty much say that a 'B'(i.e. not a teamup, but a solo standalone first movie) Marvel movie is going to take TLJ completely apart two months after release both domestically and overall. An absolute embarrassment for the brand and further proof of the underperformance of The Lost Jedi. I would imagine this won't be the last movie to do this this year. That's what happens when you severly unerperform and post fairly weak numbers.

Per the overall, this puts Black Panther within $252 million of TLJ's box office. Worldwide, BP has leapt to an overall total of $1.078 billion (re: BoxOfficeMojo), and that does not as of yet include the numbers from China, for which opening weekend has been announced as an estimated $66.5 million. TLJ made $42.577 million for its entire run in China.​

So.. once again.. Defenders of the Faith UNITE... do tell me how this box office was in any way expected? Because I don't recall a single person claiming that The Lost Jedi would perform badly enough that it would likely be beaten by a movie *2 months later*, much less have that movie be Black Panther. Nope... I don't remember that at all. Obviously this was expected though and TLJ performed to expectations.. riiiiight?

 

TLJ has received a small expansion of theaters this week (from 221 to 246).

 

An eighth installment in a series got beat at the box office by a first installment in another series, but still profited around a billion dollars, so therefore it is a failure?

Fascinating.

 

You hated the movie. Cool.
You're trying to make the finance of the film fit your favor of the film.

Taste doesn't belong mixed with financial grading.
I loved TLJ quite a bit, but I'm not sitting here saying it knocked it out of the park.
It succeeded and didn't under-perform, but it also didn't excel.

I loved Cowboys & Aliens, and it was a financial flop.
One would hope that folks can keep the two concepts separate.

TLJ didn't under-perform regardless of what goalpost you choose to move around and place next to it over time.
If it did under-perform financially, Disney would have need to account for it, and they didn't.

Legs is an arbitrary concept that aids in trying to determine attraction, not finances.
Legs also doesn't tell you anything about financial total gross or net earnings.

BP might beat TLJ, it might not. It's not where TLJ was at this point. We won't know until around the 30th to 40th day when TLJ started to level off from its climb.
If at that point BP is still climbing and not leveling off, then it might be on track to surpass TLJ which would be pretty impressive.
As it stands at the moment, it's not beating TLJ - regardless of legs.


Also, BP is not a low-rate Marvel title. It's performing well.
And further, even if BP were to beat TLJ, that would not mean that TLJ under-performed financially.
This isn't the Kobra Kai club in The Karate Kid. Under-performance isn't a measurement determined by whether or not another film comes along and does even better than the film in question.

It's a financial question for Disney, and their answer was that it was a success.
That's the end of it.

You can hate the film all that you want, and you can call it an under-performing film because you hated the film all that you want.
That won't actually change the financial fact in Disney's recording it as a success.

If it under-performed your expectations; cool. That's what it did. It under-performed ScumAndVillainy's expectations.

Again, it's perfectly alright for a film to financially succeed and for a lot of people to still hate the film...just look at Titanic.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

You loved the movie. Cool.

I don't have to make it do anything. It did that on its own. Just look at your graph and that dropoff. Wow.

You're presumably saying it met your expectations. That before release, you expected this movie to make $1.3 billion. Was that your projection? Please quote your post where this was the case so that we can see it met your expectations. If, however, you were looking at say $1.6-1.7 billion, then it did something called underperforming. By all means don't let your taste cloud your judgment. Unless you called $1.3 billion, it underperformed your expectations. If it did it by more than say $200 million, it greatly underperformed your expectations.

Most people, if they're being honest, would have laughed someone off the boards pre-release that predicted either A) $1.3 billion total gross or B) that Black Panther would compete, and likely pass it at the box office.

Once again, who was saying that TLJ was expected to make $1.3 billion? Not Disney, that's for sure. Not analysts, that's for sure. And the fans sure as hell wouldn't. So exactly what goal post ARE you using that says that $1.3 billion was expected, such that you can make the claim TLJ didn't underperform?

Are you simply removing the goal post all together and claiming it didn't just because you say or it didn't just because Disney didn't call it that? What IS the goal post you're using?

Legs is simply a word used to define how much a money made after initial release. How long did it hang around? Jumanji 2 is STILL in the top 10 in its 12th week and almost @ $400 million domestically. Its made more money during 'legs'(after Jan 1), than it did before that during the holidays.

That we're even having the discussion of if it will is comical. First movie IP standalones of Marvel don't beat a new Star Wars Episodic Saga Movie unless something went horribly wrong to the tune of a $700 million shortfall. This isn't even a discussion if TLJ wasn't such a lightweight.

At the moment. Of course, that's an old graph as BP is at $1.078 billion with China just coming online with an estimated $66.5 million.

New Marvel IP tend to always get off to a slow start. So at this point you have team-ups, which are top-tier Marvel Films and do substantially better, and then a lower-tier 'individual character' Marvel film which are the smaller films... both in budget and in gross. For SW to get cracked back by the lower tier Marvel film is staggering. Nobody predicted that would happen this quick, and a lot of it is simply TLJ performing that badly.. no matter how much you try to spin it.

 

That's a typical drop-off. Lots of films have that same flow.

I already showed, in this thread, several estimates prior to the release that were around 1.3 to 1.5 billion.
I also showed that the estimates for 1.6 - 1.7 billion came after opening weekend, despite the pre-release estimates correctly estimating nearly the exact results of what the opening weekend ended up being and also still only figuring on a 1.3 to 1.5 billion range for the final.

A is incorrect. Most published results prior to release estimated 1.3 to 1.5 billion.

Several estimates cited that range. Go back and look through this thread since you missed it if you want to read where I already outlined this.
Disney reported the title as a success, so they did not see a return that they weren't looking for. Otherwise they would have not claimed that it was a success. Under-performance doesn't get reported as a success in quarterly reports.

No. I'm saying you can compare it against any movie that you want, but it means nothing to the gauge of whether Disney sees it as under-performing or not.
Disney needed a certain level of return, and from their quarterly, they are reporting that TLJ succeeded in accomplishing at least that goal, otherwise they would have listed depreciation from the earnings and discussed it.
I'm also saying that if another film comes along and beats TLJ, that doesn't mean that TLJ under-performed. That means the other film did really well.
Disney won't be retro-fitting it's quarterly report to cite TLJ as under-performing in light of some newly released film beating TLJ's success.

I don't dispute what legs are for. I stated that it means nothing against the total gross and net as what Disney measures in their quarterly for success or failure isn't legs - it's total earnings.

TLJ is listed as a success, and I think it's safe to assume that BP will also be listed as a success.

That means nothing to the grade of whether it was financially successful or under-performed.
Disney does not consider TLJ to have under-performed financially.
That you want TLJ to have done better for what it is, is your choosing; not Disney's.

I pulled that data from The Numbers and Box Office Mojo right before I posted.

I don't really care what new IP's do or don't do.
BP is doing great. Everyone's talking about it. It's getting some records. The same thing happened with TLJ.
Good for both.
BOTH assets belong to Disney. Regardless if you think TLJ was an under-performing asset or not, Disney doesn't think so and they're smiling about both TLJ and BP.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Hahahahahahahahahaahahaha