The Disney CFO Who Raised Concerns About Bob Chapek Has Respect on the Street

“She is revered and nicely regarded by the board, so she has pull. She has the burden and the affect and the historical past with the board,” mentioned Jonathan Kees, a senior analysis analyst at a subsidiary of Daiwa Securities Group Inc., the Japanese funding financial institution.

Geared up with a bachelor’s diploma in biology from Smith Faculty and a grasp of enterprise administration in advertising and marketing and finance from UCLA Anderson Faculty of Administration, Ms. McCarthy joined Disney in 2000 following years in banking, together with as chief monetary officer of Imperial Bancorp. 

She was employed as Disney’s treasurer and gained extra obligations through the years, changing into government vp with oversight of actual property and operations alongside her treasurer duties in 2005. In 2008, she additionally took on procurement, company alliances and partnerships, and in 2015—after 15 years as treasurer—succeeded

Jay Rasulo

as finance chief, the primary feminine to take that position at Disney. 

Ms. McCarthy’s promotion to the CFO position got here after Mr. Rasulo and his predecessor, former CFO

Tom Staggs,

vied over who would succeed

Robert Iger

as CEO. Each of them finally stepped down from the corporate. 

Her first steps as CFO weren’t straightforward. Throughout her first earnings name as finance chief in August 2015, with Mr. Iger, Ms. McCarthy delivered a minimize to the corporate’s outlook for its cable enterprise, pointing to cord-cutting. 

“In some ways, that had cascading impacts to investor sentiment for Disney and the broader media sector for years to come back,” mentioned Kutgun Maral, a media analyst at RBC Capital Markets, a monetary providers agency. 

Individuals who bought to know her when she was treasurer and oversaw Disney’s real-estate portfolio laud her data and experience. One government who thought of shopping for one in all Disney’s properties in New York and toured the location with Ms. McCarthy described her data as spectacular. 

She is supportive of different feminine executives and a mentor to younger finance abilities, analysts mentioned, and she or he sits on a number of boards, together with

Procter & Gamble Co.

Underneath Ms. McCarthy, Disney has surpassed analysts’ expectations for reported earnings per share in 17 of 30 quarters, and has accomplished a string of acquisitions, together with the key leisure property of twenty first Century Fox in 2019. She is taken into account a levelheaded individual with a way for what’s proper and what’s unsuitable, in accordance with individuals who have labored along with her. 

Throughout the pandemic, when practically half of the corporate’s income vanished briefly as its theme parks and film theaters had been closed and cruise strains had been shut down, Ms. McCarthy stored in shut contact with scores companies and Wall Avenue traders, in accordance with

Neil Begley,

a senior vp at scores agency Moody’s Traders Service. Disney took on about $23 billion in emergency liquidity, stopped shopping for again shares, paused its dividend and furloughed 1000’s of employees.

“She has the ear of Wall Avenue,” mentioned Peter Supino, a media analyst at Wolfe Analysis LLC, a analysis agency. 

Greater than two and half years because the starting of the pandemic, Disney’s dividend has but to be restated. The corporate, which has $11.61 billion in money and money equivalents on its stability sheet, has a number of billion in debt maturing in coming years. 

Ms. McCarthy, who has been identified for dependable forecasts amongst traders, not too long ago needed to report some earnings misses. For 2 out of the previous six quarters, the corporate’s income missed analysts’ consensus estimates, resulting in questions on its streaming technique. 

One of many questions dealing with the corporate is whether or not it ought to cut back a number of the objectives that the administration staff set in August. Based mostly on these, Disney+ by the tip of fiscal 2024 would have between 135 million to 165 million customers in its core enterprise and as much as 80 million in its Hotstar enterprise, which operates in India and different rising markets. The streaming enterprise, which was launched in 2019, would flip worthwhile in fiscal 2024.  

Disney in November lowered expectations for Hotstar through the first quarter of fiscal 2023 however mentioned its core subscriber progress could be largely per earlier steering. Analysts referred to as {that a} missed likelihood to appropriate market expectations at a time of fixing sentiment.

Approaching the earnings launch for the quarter ended Oct. 1, Disney’s administration staff didn’t put together the marketplace for what was to come back—about $1.5 billion in losses within the streaming division, analysts mentioned.

“They appeared somewhat tone-deaf to the losses, however that didn’t come from Christine,” RBC’s Mr. Maral mentioned.

She is a part of a bunch of executives who at the moment are, within the phrases of returning Chief Government Mr. Iger, engaged on bringing extra decision-making energy to the corporate’s artistic groups and rationalizing prices, following the dismantling of a centralized unit that was created beneath Mr. Chapek, in accordance with a memo despatched by Mr. Iger to workers. 

Following the management shake-up, Disney faces a problem to regain belief from the road and Ms. McCarthy must realign along with her previous and new chief government Mr. Iger, analysts mentioned. 

Age 67, Ms. McCarthy is prone to keep on whereas Mr. Iger evaluations Disney’s technique and searches for an additional successor to himself, analysts mentioned. Her contract runs via June 2024, in accordance with a submitting with securities regulators. 

Write to Nina Trentmann at nina.trentmann@wsj.com and Mark Maurer at mark.maurer@wsj.com