Disney CEO Bob Iger hasn’t left the building yet, and on Monday’s earnings call he said didn’t want to get too “nostalgic” about his two-decade run at the company.
The Disney board is expected to select Iger’s successor by midweek. As he gets ready to depart as the Mouse House’s CEO, Iger noted the turnaround in the Disney theme parks business since he first took the top job in 2005 — with the parks business rivaling the movie and TV in being the leading contributor growth and profits.
“We have a healthy competition now at our company in terms of which of those two businesses is going to essentially prevail as the No. 1 driver of profitability for the company,” Iger said on the earnings call. “But I’m confident that both have that ability, meaning both have the ability to grow nicely into the future, giving all the investments that we’ve made and the trajectory that we’re on.”
For the last three months of 2025, the parks business was the stronger performer. Disney’s theme parks and products biz hit a record $10 billion in revenue (up 6%) in the year-end quarter and operating income rose 6% to $3.3 billion. Revenue in Disney’s entertainment business rose 11% to $11.6 billion but operating profit dropped 35%, to $1.1 billion, on higher content, production and marketing costs.
Iger is reportedly planning to step down before his contract officially expires at the end of 2026. The board is “aligning” around selecting Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Experiences, per Bloomberg.
Commenting on the agenda for Disney’s next CEO, Iger said that “trying to preserve the status quo is a mistake.”
“In the world that changes as much as it does… trying to preserve the status quo is a mistake, and I’m certain that my successor will not do that,” he told analysts. “So [the new CEO will] be handed, I think, a good hand in terms of the strength of the company, a number of opportunities to grow and and also the exhortation that in a world that changes, you also have to continue to change and evolve as well.”
Earlier on the call, Iger didn’t exactly sound like he was ready to go yet. “I don’t want to really… get too nostalgic or spend too much time on a possible transition,” he said, before interjecting, “or the probable transition.” The good news, he said, “is that the company is in much better shape today than it was three years ago.”
Iger previously retired at the end of 2021, after serving as CEO of Disney for 15 years, and was replaced by then-CEO Bob Chapek. But in November 2022, the board ousted Chapek and brought Iger back as chief exec.
Iger was asked by Citi analyst Jason Bazinet about the turnaround in Disney’s theme parks, which when the exec was named CEO was considered by investors “the worst business in the portfolio.”
Iger responded, “Look, you go all the way back to 2005 when I became CEO, the return on invested capital in the parks and resorts business was not impressive and actually not acceptable. And we also had not that much building in progress, meaning there wasn’t much expansion, but maybe for good reason, because the return on invested capital was so low.”
He continued, “As we added IP to our stable, including Pixar in ’06 and Marvel in ’09 and Lucasfilm Star Wars in ’12 and, ultimately, 20th Century Fox, we gained access to intellectual property that had real value in terms of parks and resorts and enabled us to lean into more capital spending because of the confidence level we had in improving returns on invested capital due to the popularity of that IP.”
“And when you look at the footprint of the business today, it’s never been more broad or more diverse, and the projects that we have under way are going to make it even more so,” Iger said. “So you know, as I look ahead, I actually am very, very bullish on that business and its ability to grow because of everything that I just cited.”
At the same time, Iger touted the reversal in the Disney+ and Hulu streaming business, which a few years ago had been losing upwards of a billion dollars per quarter, and the Disney film studio. “Looking back just a few years,” he said, “our movie business was suffering from COVID, and the streaming business was obviously in not an acceptable place. It’s clear that the future of both of those businesses, or let’s call it, our entertainment business, is also bright and is going to grow.”
