The Walt Disney Company (Ticker: DIS) operates as a global entertainment powerhouse, generating revenue through a diverse portfolio of businesses that span theme parks, cruise lines, media networks, streaming services, and consumer products. The company's core economic engine is built on creating beloved stories and characters, then monetizing them across multiple platforms and experiences.

For the fiscal year ended September 27, 2025, Disney reported total revenues of $94.4 billion. This revenue is primarily driven by three main segments:

• Experiences: This segment includes Disney's theme parks, resorts, cruise line, and consumer products. It generates revenue from ticket sales, merchandise, food and beverage, hotel stays, and licensing of its intellectual property for various products. The Experiences segment reported a full-year operating income of $10.0 billion in fiscal 2025. In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, the Experiences segment achieved record quarterly revenue of $10.0 billion.
• Entertainment: This segment encompasses Disney's Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) streaming services like Disney+ and Hulu, traditional Linear Networks (such as ABC and FX), and Content Sales/Licensing. Revenue comes from subscriptions, advertising, and the sale or licensing of films and television content. The Entertainment segment's full-year operating income increased 19% to $4.7 billion in fiscal 2025.
• Sports: This segment is primarily driven by ESPN, generating revenue from affiliate fees paid by cable providers and advertising sales. In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, Sports operating income decreased 17% to $858 million, primarily due to higher programming costs, though subscription fees grew 8% to $3.1 billion.

The Metrics That Matter Most

For a company like Disney, which is deeply invested in creating content and experiences, these performance metrics offer the clearest picture of its financial health and operational success:

1. Revenue: This metric tells us the total amount of money Disney brings in from all its businesses. For a diversified entertainment company, consistent revenue growth shows that Disney is successfully attracting customers across its theme parks, streaming services, and media offerings. It's the top-line indicator of how much demand there is for Disney's magic. For fiscal year 2025, Disney's revenues increased 3% to $94.4 billion.
2. Operating Income: Disney has several distinct businesses, each with its own costs and earnings. Operating income helps us see how profitable each of these core businesses is before accounting for things like interest payments on debt or taxes. It's a great way to understand which parts of Disney are performing well and contributing most to the company's overall profit. For fiscal year 2025, Disney's total segment operating income increased 12% to $17.6 billion.
3. Free Cash Flow: Disney constantly invests in new attractions for its parks, new cruise ships, and producing a vast amount of movies and TV shows. Free cash flow shows how much cash the company has left over after paying for all these necessary investments to keep its businesses growing. It's a crucial measure of financial strength, indicating how much cash is available to pay down debt, potentially increase dividends, or buy back shares. For fiscal year 2025, Disney reported $10.1 billion in free cash flow.
4. CapEx (Capital Expenditures): This metric directly measures how much money Disney is spending to build and improve its physical assets, like new rides at theme parks, new cruise ships, and infrastructure for content production. Given Disney's strategy of continuous innovation and expansion in its Experiences segment and content creation, tracking CapEx is vital to understand the scale of its investments for future growth. Disney's capital expenditures for fiscal year 2025 were $8.0 billion, and the company expects fiscal 2026 capital expenditures to be approximately $9 billion.

How to Value This Company

The most relevant valuation metric for Disney's business model is EV/EBITDA (Enterprise Value to Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization).

Here's why: Disney owns a lot of physical assets, like theme parks and resorts, and creates a massive amount of content. These assets are expensive to build and maintain, and their value decreases over time (this is called depreciation and amortization). EBITDA helps us look at the company's operating earnings before these non-cash expenses, as well as before interest payments and taxes.

Enterprise Value (EV) is like the total price tag of the entire company, including its stock market value, plus its debt, minus any cash it has. By comparing this total value to EBITDA, we get a clearer picture of how much investors are willing to pay for each dollar of Disney's core operating earnings, without the distortions caused by different accounting methods for depreciation or varying debt levels. This makes EV/EBITDA a good tool to compare Disney to other large, capital-intensive entertainment companies and determine if its stock is cheap or expensive relative to its underlying business performance.