Disney had it’s earnings call on February 4th, and as before, CEO Bob Iger was focused on Disney+.

The report is that Disney+ has strong earnings in the first 3 months of launch coming in at 28.6 million subscribers for the new service. That is a good number.

But, what I want to know is how many of those are the free accounts given out by Verizon, Disney itself to employees and how many of the free 7-day trial accounts counted for those. Are cancelled accounts counted in this number as well.

We know that Verizon has even stated that the promotion for a free year subscription, with their unlimited service, was far more successful than they anticipated.

Why does it matter?

It matters because it might not be reflecting the entire picture of how many paid subscribers that the new platform has. This would directly impact stock prices as they are using this “amazing news” to boost support and word of mouth for their platform. I’m completely sure 28.6 million is an accurate number, what I’m not sure of is how many people are actually paying for the service and bringing in the money to bolster the 17% per-share profit decline and recoup some of the massive amounts of money Disney spent on making new content for the service and setting up upcoming content.

I’m sure the numbers will climb as more countries gain access to the service and I’m sure a lot of people who have the free subscriptions could move to paid later this year, but I’m also sure that the numbers aren’t telling the entire story either.

Time will tell. I do look forward to seeing what the numbers are in the first quarter of 2021 when the free subscriptions phase out and we get more world-wide numbers. That’s where I would put weight in numbers and stock.

What do you think? Comment and let us know!