Post the Fox Studios acquisition, DIS remains in three businesses: broadcasting, theme parks and movies. December 2019 quarterly operating income from the three (ex direct to consumer) was roughly $5 billion. Of that, just under half came from theme parks, a third came from broadcasting and the rest from movies.
All three business lines have their warts:
–ESPN, the largest part of broadcasting, has long since lost its allure as a growth vehicle; ABC is breakeven-ish; I think there’s some scope for boosting results from Fox. Pencil in slow/no growth
–theme parks are (were?) booming, but they’re a highly business cycle sensitive business. We’ll see that, I think, in March- and June-quarter results. so even though it’s Disney we should apply a discount multiple to these earnings
–movies are traditionally a low multiple business because of the irregularity of new releases and their typical hit-and-miss nature. DIS has been exceptionally good for a long time under Bob Iger (it was pretty awful before him), but this is still inherently a low multiple enterprise.
This is the main reason the stock spent years bouncing around the $110 level with flattish $10 billion, $6 a share, in earnings. In the era of human analysts, it wasn’t just the earnings that held the company back. It was also knowledge of the slow demise of ESPN, the (in hindsight too conservative) sense that theme parks were nearing a cyclical peak, and the idea that the company’s incredible movie hot streak might come to an end.
Then there’s the streaming business, where–to pluck a number out of the air, DIS is spending 10% of its operating income to develop.
A couple of months ago no price seemed too high for Wall Street to pay for Disney+, with the stock peaking at $153. If we say $25 of the rise was due to streaming, at the top the market was valuing Disney+ at $40 billion+, or roughly a quarter of the value of Netflix.
The stock has fallen by about 40% since.
Now, hang onto your hat:
If we assume that the implied value of Disney+ has fallen in tandem with NFLX, it’s now valued at $32 billion. This gives a residual value for the rest of DIS of about $140 billion.
That would imply a multiple of 13x current earnings–or, alternatively, an assumed 20% decline in profits. The decline would likely be mostly (I’m assuming entirely) in the parks and movie divisions, implying that area’s income would fall by somewhere around 30%.
So–in this way of looking at things, we are assuming substantial success for Disney+ and a decline in the most cyclical businesses of roughly half what the market is assuming for companies like Marriott. It would be cheaper to create a “synthetic” DIS out of NFLX + MAR shares, although what would be missing would be the Disney brand.
My conclusion: Mickey and Minnie aren’t screaming “Buy me.”