Q3 results to last year s Q3. Which is exactly what we ll do here. Looking at every individual business inside Disney could be too much information. The trick is to lump together all the businesses that have a lot in common, business-wise. The Walt Disney Company has already done this, because they too need an easier way to keep track of and manage what s going on.
Revenues is the amount of money coming in, or how much stuff has been sold.
What we care about is how much money they re taking in, not precisely when they do that. The idea is that Operating Income is the profit made from the main, on-going units of the business. While total profit is important, it doesn t tell us much about the conditions or trends that Operating Income doesn t tell us already. Looking at how much each business unit sells and how much profit each one makes, and seeing how that has been changing over time. This should tell us a lot about how the unit is doing and how it can be expected to do in the near future.