Disney’s New CEO Josh D’Amaro Is Reportedly Planning Thousands of Job Cuts Ahead of Nov. 17 Earnings. Here’s What It Means for a 72-Year-Old Widow With $150,000 of Disney

Josh D’Amaro reports his first full year as Disney’s chief executive on Tuesday, Nov. 17, before the market opens, and thousands of job cuts are on the table. He succeeded Bob Iger on March 18. Bloomberg reported on Nov. 2 that Disney is moving toward thousands of job cuts, with some managers asked to find 20% in annual savings through job eliminations, expense reductions or both, from a workforce of about 231,000. Disney declined to comment, and it has not confirmed a number, a date or a dollar figure.

The reported cuts read as a signal that D’Amaro intends to make his first full year a story about margins, and Tuesday’s call is where he would say so; the limit of that reading is that Disney has confirmed nothing, and a round that Deadline reports is likely to land in early 2027 puts no savings into Tuesday’s numbers. What the company has said on the record is narrower. “We are mid-stream in this work and will provide future updates on our progress,” D’Amaro and finance chief Hugh Johnston wrote to shareholders on Aug. 5, after saying they were evaluating cost savings including labor.

Take a 72-year-old widow in Ohio, a scenario built from Disney’s numbers. Her husband bought 1,256 Disney shares in their joint brokerage account on the first trading day of 2010, at $32.07, for $40,280. He died in September 2024. She has $1.6 million in all, most of it in the IRA that was his, and Disney is the one stock she owns outright: at Friday’s close of $118.97 the shares are worth $149,426, about $150,000, or 9.3% of everything she has. She collects $3,000 a month from Social Security as a survivor and draws $60,000 a year from the IRA. Here is what Tuesday can do to that $150,000, what the dividend decision means for her check, and the one way out that costs her least.

What the shares have done

Disney has paid her well and tested her patience. The shares are worth 3.7 times what her husband paid. The stock is up 19.7% since D’Amaro’s first day as CEO and 5.2% since the Nov. 2 close, the last before the layoffs report, and its 52-week closing high is $119.65, set on Nov. 11. It is also still 41.1% below its all-time closing high of $201.91 in March 2021, by Alpha Vantage closes.

What Tuesday could do to $150,000

Options traders price a 6.3% move in either direction after the report, by TipRanks’ reading of the Nov. 20 contracts, so $9,414 of her stake is in play Tuesday morning. That is about what Disney does on report day. Over its last eight reports the stock moved an average of 6.1%, and five of the eight moves were 6% or larger: +6.2% in November 2024 (worth $9,310 on her stake today), +10.8% in May 2025 ($16,082), -7.7% last November ($11,580), -7.4% in February ($11,061) and +7.5% in May ($11,272). August’s report moved it +3.6%.

What Wall Street expects: $1.69 a share for the quarter against $1.11 a year earlier, on revenue of $25.19 billion, up 12.2%, by TipRanks. Disney has told investors to expect adjusted earnings growth of about 16% for the full year, about 12% without the extra week in this quarter, which it says adds about $600 million of operating income that will not repeat next year. If you own the stock, the swing is the price of finding out what D’Amaro says about the cuts.

The dividend check, and what Tuesday decides about it

Disney pays twice a year, and it sets the year’s dividend when it reports the fourth quarter. Last Nov. 13 the board raised it 50%, to $1.50 a share. On her 1,256 shares that is $1,884 a year, two checks of $942, a 1.26% yield at Friday’s price and 4.7% on what her husband paid.

Her check has a history worth knowing. Before the pandemic the rate was $1.76, worth $2,211 a year to her. Disney suspended the dividend in 2020 and paid nothing until January 2024. She collected $942 in 2024, $1,256 in 2025 and $1,884 this year. Each dime the board adds on Tuesday is worth $126 a year to her; a return to the 2019 rate would add $327. Barchart’s Mohit Oberoi expects a modest raise at most: the stock has lagged the market this year, the company lifted its buyback target to $9 billion, and a big dividend raise announced alongside layoffs would make for bad press. If you live on dividends, count Disney’s as a pleasant check rather than an income plan. Its own record shows it can go to zero for three years.

Concentration: 9.3% in one stock at 72

A common planner’s rule of thumb caps any one stock at 5% to 10% of a portfolio, and at 72 the low end is the sensible one, because a bad report can no longer be made up with a paycheck. Disney at 9.3% sits at the top of the range. Selling half, 628 shares for $74,713, takes it to 4.7%. The reason she has not sold is the tax bill. If you are in her seat, a rule written for surviving spouses changes the answer.

The tax bill: half her shares already got a step-up

When her husband died, half the shares in the joint account got a new cost basis: the $91.85 close on the day he died, under the step-up rules for property held jointly by spouses (Sections 1014 and 2040 of the tax code) in a common-law state like Ohio. Her own half kept the 2010 basis of $32.07. In a community property state both halves would have stepped up. So she holds two lots of 628 shares with very different gains: $54,573 on the 2010 lot and $17,031 on the stepped-up lot, $71,605 in all.

Her income sets the rate. The $36,000 of Social Security is 85% taxable at her income, and with the $60,000 from the IRA her adjusted gross income is $90,600. After the $16,100 standard deduction, the $2,050 addition at 65 and the $5,064 of the $6,000 senior deduction that survives its phase-out, her taxable income is $67,386, in the 22% bracket for a single filer. Her long-term gains are taxed at 15%.

Sell everything this year and the federal bill is $11,686, counting the senior deduction the gain erodes, plus a Medicare surcharge: her income would reach $162,205, past the $137,000 second tier for single filers, which adds $240.40 a month to her Part B and Part D premiums in 2028, $2,885 for the year. Call it $14,600.

Sell only the stepped-up lot, by telling the broker which shares to sell, and the bill is $2,780. Her income lands at $107,631, which is $1,369 under the $109,000 line where the surcharge begins. Same 628 shares out the door, same 4.7% weight, about one-fifth of the tax.

What to do before Tuesday

Three choices, in order of cost. Do nothing and ride the report: the swing is about $9,400 either way, and the dividend keeps coming. Sell the stepped-up lot before Monday’s close for $74,713 and $2,780 of tax, which halves the swing and keeps her under the Medicare line; the 2010 lot can wait for a year when her income is lower, or pass to her children with a full step-up of its own. Sell all of it and pay about five times as much for the same peace of mind.

If you hold a stock your spouse bought years ago, check two things before Tuesday: which of your shares carry the stepped-up basis, and where your income this year sits against the $109,000 line. Your broker’s cost-basis page shows the first; your 2025 return is a fair guide to the second.

The bottom line

Josh D’Amaro’s first full-year report arrives Tuesday with thousands of job cuts reported and nothing confirmed. For a widow with $150,000 of Disney it is a $9,414 swing, a $1,884 dividend that each added dime raises by $126, and a tax decision that turns on which half of her shares she sells. The stepped-up half costs $2,780 to sell. The rest is Disney’s to tell at 8:30 a.m.

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