Wall Street Today: Disney's earning beats expectations across the board

Asian shares looked set for a muted open Friday as the spread of the delta variant and China’s regulatory curbs subdue sentiment despite another record close on Wall Street.

Futures edged up in Japan and Australia but fell in Hong Kong. U.S. contracts were steady. Earlier, the S&P 500 hit a fresh peak, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 also climbed. Ten-year U.S. Treasury yields reached a one-month high amid a tepid 30-year auction and data highlighting price pressures and a labor market recovery. A gauge of the dollar advanced.

Revenue for the three months ended June climbed 20% from a year earlier to 31.35 billion yuan ($4.8 billion), compared with the 30.9 billion yuan of estimates. The company predicted sales of 30.6 billion yuan to 33.5 billion yuan for the September quarter, versus the 33.1 billion yuan seen by analysts.

Home prices surged in almost every corner of the U.S. in the second quarter as robust demand continued to overwhelm the supply of homes for sale.

While the homebuying frenzy has shown signs of a slowdown in recent months, home-price growth has yet to cool.

The median sales price for single-family existing homes was higher in the second quarter compared with a year ago for 182 of the 183 metro areas tracked by the National Association of Realtors, the association said Thursday. In 94% of those metro areas, median prices rose by more than 10% from a year earlier.

The company’s shares were up more than 5% in after hours trading.

The company beat on subscriber estimates for Disney+, coming in at 116 million. StreetAccount estimated the company to report 114.5 million subscribers for its third quarter. The segment had 103.6 million in its fiscal second quarter.

Revenue in the three months ended June 30 was $1.24 billion, up 83% from the year-earlier quarter when nationwide shutdowns because of Covid-19 propelled blistering growth. That came in slightly higher than the $1.10 billion average estimate of analysts polled by FactSet.

Here’s how the company did:

The company reported 83.1 million nights and experiences booked, up 29% from the first quarter and up a whopping 197% year over year after the travel industry collapsed a year ago amid the public health crisis. Analysts polled by StreetAccount had expected 79.2 million nights and experiences booked.

Stocks on Wall Street rose on Thursday, after data showing the number of people filing for unemployment benefits for the first time fell, bolstering confidence that the US economic recovery is still fending off the spread of the delta coronavirus variant.

The S&P 500 rallied 0.3 per cent, notching its third straight day of gains and marking a fresh high. The technology heavy Nasdaq Composite index closed 0.4 per cent higher, helping to erode some of the previous two days’ losses.

The stock dropped nearly 8% in its biggest intraday decline since March. It has lost more than 15% so far this week, putting it on track for its biggest one-week decline since March 2020.

The day’s slump came after Morgan Stanley downgraded the stock to equal weight from overweight as a part of a broadly negative call on the market for the DRAM category of memory chips, Micron’s largest product in terms of revenue, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.