Walt Disney Co’s quarterly profit topped Wall Street’s estimates as its blockbuster animated film Frozen heated up home entertainment and toy sales, and visitors flocked to the company’s US theme parks.

Disney shares rose 4.4 per cent to $98.23 (Dh360) in after-hours trading on Tuesday. The stock reached record highs in recent months on strong performances across its TV networks, theme parks and movie studio. Each of its five divisions reported higher operating income for the quarter, which ended on December 27.

At Disney’s parks unit, operating income rose 20 per cent to $805 million as more people visited its US parks and increased spending on tickets, merchandise, food and drinks.

Chief Executive Bob Iger told CNBC that there had been no discernible impact on parks from a measles outbreak that health officials have said began at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, in December.

Disney now plans to open its Shanghai Disneyland theme park in the spring of 2016, Iger told analysts. The company had earlier set a target of a late 2015 opening, but decided to add attractions to the park, a $5.5 billion joint venture with China’s state-owned Shanghai Shendi Group.

Frozen toys sold particularly well during the holiday shopping quarter, helping Disney’s consumer products unit earn a $626 million profit, up 46 per cent from a year earlier.

Disney will fuel the franchise with Frozen Fever a seven-minute film that features a new song and will be shown in theatres ahead of its live action Cinderella movie, to be released on March 13.

“We actually believe it’s going to generate some more buzz for Frozen, and that should generate more buying in terms of consumer products,” Iger said.

Disney’s movie studio recorded a 33 per cent jump in profit, driven by home entertainment sales of Frozen, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Maleficent. Profit at cable networks fell 2 per cent, hurt by higher programming and production costs and lower advertising revenue at sports channel ESPN. Broadcasting unit ABC recorded a 35 per cent increase in operating income from higher affiliate fees and programme sales.

Net profit attributable to Walt Disney rose to $2.18 billion, or $1.27 per share, in the quarter, from $1.03 per share a year earlier.

On an adjusted basis, the company earned $1.27 per share.

Revenue rose 8.8 per cent to $13.39 billion. Analysts had expected a profit of $1.07 per share on revenue of $12.87 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.