(Reuters) - Shares of Walt Disney Co (N:DIS) and Comcast Corp (O:CMCSA) tumbled on Thursday after Disney warned of stagnant earnings and No. 1 cable operator Comcast forecast more subscriber losses.
Shares of Disney closed 4.4 percent lower at $97.06 on the New York Stock Exchange, and Comcast fell 6.2 percent to $38.60 on Nasdaq.
Walt Disney and Comcast are the two latest examples of media and entertainment companies struggling under increased competition and a trend by consumers of ditching cable packages for less expensive online streaming options.
Comcast expects to lose up to 150,000 video subscribers in the third quarter due to competition and the impact of recent hurricanes, Matthew Strauss, executive vice president of the company's Xfinity Services, said at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch (NYSE:BAC) 2017 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference. The Xfinity unit comprises Comcast's residential video, phone and internet businesses.
Walt Disney's chief executive, Bob Iger, said at the conference that the company's earnings per share for the current fiscal year ending Oct. 1 will be roughly in line with a year ago, when it earned $5.72 per share. Analysts had been expecting the company to earn $5.88 this year, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Disney's new streaming service, set to launch in late 2019, will exclusively feature movies from the "Star Wars" franchise and Marvel films such as "Avengers" and "Iron Man," Iger said.
In addition, Disney will create four to five new Disney movies and four or five original TV shows exclusively for the streaming app, he said.
Disney said last month it would launch its own streaming service and stop providing new movies to Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) starting in 2019.
The company had not previously disclosed the distribution plan for the films from superhero studio Marvel and "Star Wars" producer Lucasfilm after the deal with Netflix ends in 2018.