The Walt Disney Company delivered a strong performance in the second quarter of fiscal 2025, ending March 29. Total revenue rose to $23.6 billion, a 7% increase compared to $22.1 billion in the same quarter last year. This growth was driven by improved performance across multiple segments, especially entertainment and experiences.
Net Income had a significant turnaround, with a $3.3 billion improvement year-over-year. This signaled a strong financial recovery and operational efficiency across the board.
Moving on to the question, is the top entertainment provider’s sustainability game equally on point as its revenue? Let’s analyse and find out the answer.
Walt Disney’s Q2 2025 Segment Performance
Segment operating income climbed to $4.4 billion, up 15% from Q2 2024. Diluted earnings per share (EPS) reached $1.81, a sharp turnaround from the $0.01 loss reported last year. Adjusted EPS rose 20% to $1.45, surpassing analyst estimates of $1.20.
- Entertainment: Strong growth, driven by streaming and content sales. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) operating income rose sharply to $336 million from $47 million a year ago.
- Experiences (Parks, Resorts, Cruises): Revenue grew 6% to $8.9 billion, with operating income up 9% to $2.5 billion.
- Streaming: Disney+ added 1.4 million subscribers, reversing previous quarter losses, reaching 126 million total subscribers. Hulu SVOD grew by 1.3 million, totaling 54.7 million subscribers.
Strategic Developments
- Theme Parks: Disney announced its seventh theme park and resort, to be built in Abu Dhabi in partnership with Miral, marking a major international expansion.
- Streaming Partnerships: Collaboration with Whale TV to expand digital content offerings, supporting growth in Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu.
- ESPN: Continued investments, with a new direct-to-consumer offering planned for later in the year
Market Reaction
- Disney’s strong Q2 2025 results led to a 9–10% surge in its stock price, reflecting renewed investor confidence.
Robert A. Iger, Chief Executive Officer, The Walt Disney Company, noted,
“Our outstanding performance this quarter—with adjusted EPS(1) up 20% from the prior year driven by our Entertainment and Experiences businesses—underscores our continued success building for growth and executing across our strategic priorities. Following an excellent first half of the fiscal year, we have a lot more to look forward to, including our upcoming theatrical slate, the launch of ESPN’s new DTC offering, and an unprecedented number of expansion projects underway in our Experiences segment. Overall, we remain optimistic about the direction of the company and our outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year.”
Disney Targets Net-Zero Emissions by 2030
Since 2009, The Walt Disney Company has aimed to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its direct operations. Now, it is pushing further by aligning its climate targets with the Paris Agreement and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In 2023, the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) officially validated Disney’s updated emissions goals. These include new quantitative, time-bound targets for both direct (Scope 1 & 2) and value chain (Scope 3) emissions.
Where Disney’s Emissions Come From
- Scope 1 & 2: Direct emissions mostly arise from energy use in theme parks, resorts, corporate offices, and fuel used by Disney Cruise Line.
- Scope 3: Indirect emissions span across the supply chain—from consumer product manufacturing and food services to film and TV production.
2030 Climate Commitments
Disney’s climate action plan is built on strong, measurable goals:
- Cut absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 46.2% by 2030, compared to 2019 levels
- Reach net-zero direct emissions by 2030
- Use 100% zero-carbon electricity across global operations by 2030
- Invest in certified natural climate solutions
- Drive Scope 3 reductions by engaging suppliers, licensees, and partners
Disney’s 4-Step Strategy to Reduce Scope 1 & 2 Emissions
The figure displayed below shows that Disney’s total emissions (Scope 1 + Scope 2) in 2023 were 1.72 million metric tons CO₂e. This means emissions were significantly more than its 2022 data.
Thus, to meet its 2030 net-zero goal for direct operations, Disney is following a data-driven emissions reduction hierarchy:
- Designing low-emission infrastructure: Prioritize energy-efficient, sustainable design in new builds and renovations.
- Boosting efficiency: Improve energy and fuel efficiency across all facilities and fleets.
- Switching to low-carbon energy: Replace high-emission energy sources with renewables and cleaner fuels.
- Nature-based solutions: Invest in certified natural climate solutions to balance remaining emissions.
Cutting Scope 3 Emissions Across Its Value Chain
Disney is taking bold steps to reduce Scope 3 emissions. After reviewing over 100 strategies, the company picked the most impactful and cost-effective ones. These actions focus on the following:
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Low-Carbon Products: Using low-emission materials and improving production methods to cut carbon emissions. Supporting suppliers in shifting to renewable energy and cleaner technologies.
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Supplier & Licensee Action: Helping partners set science-based climate goals and collaborating across industries to drive broader emission cuts.
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Sustainable Media Production: Adopting eco-friendly practices in TV and film projects while reducing emissions across studio operations.
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Clean Tech & Collaboration: Investing in low-carbon innovations and working with suppliers and peers to scale impact across sectors.
By acting across its supply chain, Disney is working to meet its climate targets and lead sustainable change in the entertainment industry.
Push for 100% Zero-Carbon Electricity by 2030
Disney plans to power all its direct operations with 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2030. Most of its electricity use happens at its global theme parks and resorts and major campuses in cities like Los Angeles, New York, and Bristol.
Since each location has unique energy challenges, the company is using a smart, step-by-step plan to reach its clean energy goals.
Powering Up With Clean Energy
On-Site Solar Projects
It’s giving priority to sites where clean energy can be used directly, such as at its theme parks. For example, in 2023, Shanghai Disney Resort added 1.3 megawatts of solar panels, while Hong Kong Disneyland became the city’s largest solar site.
Green Power From Utilities
In places where on-site generation isn’t enough, Disney is teaming up with utility companies to buy clean energy directly. This includes using green power programs or working with regulators to develop fair renewable energy pricing for all customers.
Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)
Disney will also sign agreements with renewable energy projects to buy electricity, either directly or virtually. These deals help bring more clean energy to the grid and offer flexibility when on-site options aren’t available.
Energy Certificates
As a backup, the company plans to buy high-quality Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs) to match any remaining electricity use with clean energy. This ensures every unit of power is carbon-free.
By combining these four strategies, Disney aims to ensure all its electricity comes from zero-carbon sources, directly or through verified offsets.
Disney Leads the Way in Low-Carbon Fuels
Disney is also exploring low-carbon fuels to reduce emissions, especially from its cruise ships and transportation fleets at parks.
- Focus on Cruise Ships: While Disney Cruise Line is smaller than others in the industry, the company is working hard to drive innovation. It’s investing in research and testing new low-carbon fuels that reduce environmental impact.
- Supporting Clean Fuel Development: Disney is backing new technologies and helping build the supply chain for cleaner fuels. It’s also partnering with suppliers and industry peers to speed up the shift to sustainable shipping.
Sets Ambitious Sustainability Standards
Disney targets zero waste to landfill at all owned parks, resorts, and cruise lines by 2030. It plans to eliminate single-use plastics on cruise ships by 2025 and reduce them elsewhere. The company will use sustainable seafood, recycled materials, and eco-friendly packaging for branded products.
Additionally, all new projects will aim for near net zero, use water efficiently, and divert 90% of construction waste in the US and Europe by 2030.
Disney’s Q2 2025 results show solid growth in revenue, profit, and streaming performance, driven by smart expansion moves and a strong outlook for the rest of the year. While its sustainability and emissions strategies are in place, rising emissions signal a need for stronger climate action and improved management.
The post Is Disney’s Net-Zero Game as Strong as Its Revenue Surge? appeared first on Carbon Credits.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
The earnings calls that quietly reframed climate from sustainability question to operating risk.
Three earnings calls in the last 18 months tell the story without any help from a press release.
Hershey, May 2024: cocoa price exposure compresses margin, and the company attributes part of the cost shock to West African weather. Olam, July 2024: coffee climate exposure quantified in the annual report. JBS, January 2025: supply chain climate disclosures expanded materially in response to investor pressure and regulatory expectation. None of these companies issued the announcement as climate news. They issued it as financial news. The climate-linked supply chain risk did not arrive with a sustainability framing; it arrived as a P&L line.
You are probably reading this article because you suspect the same thing is happening to your business. This piece walks through what is showing up on which earnings calls, how procurement and finance leaders are quantifying the exposure, and what serious corporates are doing about it before the regulator asks.
Where climate risk has already appeared in earnings
The pattern is consistent across resource-intensive sectors. A weather event compresses supply, the price spikes, the cost flows through the income statement, and the analyst on the call asks whether the event is anomalous or structural. Increasingly, the honest answer is the second one.
Cocoa is the cleanest example. The 2023 to 2024 West African harvest fell sharply on the back of erratic rainfall and disease. Cocoa futures more than tripled. Companies with concentrated West African sourcing absorbed the cost; companies with diversified sourcing absorbed less. The exposure was not climate as ESG topic. It was climate as cost of goods.
Coffee follows the same pattern. Brazilian and Vietnamese harvests have moved on weather more sharply across the last several seasons. Roasters with long-tenor supplier relationships and origin diversification have managed the volatility; roasters with spot-market exposure have not. Wheat, sugar, palm oil, beef: the same dynamic in different commodities, a pattern the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report projects will intensify across agricultural systems through mid-century.
What this means: climate risk is no longer a footnote in the 10-K. It is a line item the CFO has to explain on the call.
The three commodity exposures that hit margin first
For most companies with material Scope 3 exposure, three exposures dominate the near-term P&L risk.
- Concentrated single-origin sourcing in a climate-vulnerable region. If your tier-one supply for any material commodity sits in one geography, you have a concentration risk that climate amplifies. Diversification across origins is the obvious hedge, but it takes years to build and requires relationships you cannot acquire by tender.
- Supplier financial fragility under climate stress. Smallholder farmers, who supply a large share of the global cocoa, coffee, and palm oil market, do not carry the balance sheets to absorb yield shocks. When yields collapse, they exit. When they exit, your supply base shrinks, and the surviving suppliers raise prices. The risk is structural, not cyclical.
- Logistics and storage exposure to extreme weather. Hurricane disruptions to Gulf shipping, drought-driven Panama Canal restrictions, flooding in European inland waterways: each of these has moved input costs in the last three years, a pattern documented in Munich Re’s natural catastrophe data. The exposure shows up as a one-quarter event in the financial press but accumulates over time on the cost line.
TCFD and ISSB disclosure changes
The disclosure architecture has now caught up with the risk. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose recommendations are now embedded in the ISSB’s IFRS S2 climate standard, requires companies to disclose climate-related risks across physical and transition categories, with quantification where possible.
For physical risk specifically (the climate-linked supply chain risk you are reading about), the disclosure must address both acute exposures (extreme weather events) and chronic exposures (gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and growing seasons). The disclosure must address the time horizon over which the risk is material, the parts of the value chain exposed, and the financial impact under different scenarios.
The CSRD imposes similar requirements under European law, with double materiality (both financial and impact materiality) embedded in the assessment. The practical effect: your auditors and your investor relations team now need a defensible answer to the climate-linked supply chain risk question, and the answer needs to be quantified.
What procurement and finance can do now
Three actions matter near-term.
Map your exposure. Most companies do not have a clear view of which tier-one and tier-two suppliers sit in which climate-vulnerable geographies. Without the map, you cannot quantify the risk, and without the quantification, you cannot disclose it credibly. The map is the foundation, and World Resources Institute climate risk research provides useful public tooling to start.
Diversify and deepen, in that order. Diversification across origins reduces concentration risk, but the deeper move is to invest in the resilience of the suppliers you already have. Regenerative practices, agroforestry, soil health interventions: these reduce yield volatility under climate stress and protect your input cost trajectory.
Embed the climate spend inside procurement, not outside it. Treating climate risk as a sustainability cost line subordinates it to the ESG budget. Treating it as a procurement and resilience investment puts it in the budget that matters, which is the cost-of-goods budget that the CFO defends quarterly.
Nature-based supply chain investments are the asset class designed for exactly this purpose. They sit inside the value chain, they reduce climate-linked supply risk, they generate verifiable Scope 3 reductions, and they produce the documentation an auditor and a regulator can both test.
If you are quantifying climate-linked supply chain risk in advance of the next earnings cycle or the next disclosure period, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you map your exposure and structure a Dual-Value Model response that addresses reduction, resilience, and disclosure-readiness in a single program. Schedule a consultation.
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are hearing the same question from their larger customers: What is your carbon footprint? That question now travels down entire supply chains, and it arrives next to tender requirements, certification criteria, and rising customer expectations.
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