Walt Disney Co CEO Bob Iger impressed Wall Street on Wednesday by driving a hard bargain with the company’s creatives: You get your autonomy and authority back, he seemed to say, but you also must be accountable. Just what that accountability looks like was spelled out on the company’s first-quarter earnings call, with 7,000 layoffs and $5.5 billion in slashed spending, cuts that won’t make the jobs of filmmakers, showrunners and theme-park ride designers any easier.
Wall Street applauded Iger’s encore performance. The stock, which was already on an upward run this year with Iger back in the CEO chair, shot up 5% after-hours to $117.82.