Category Archives: Entertainment

Disney (DIS) from 30,000 feet

August 10, 2016 By in Cable, earnings conference calls, Entertainment, ESPN, Uncategorized Tags: , , , 1 Comment

I’d only followed DIS from afar until the company acquired Marvel Entertainment, which I held in my portfolio, for a combination of stock and cash in late 2009.  I kept the shares I acquired and also bought more while DIS was depressed by critics doubting the wisdom of its move. I’m tempted to write about how wrong that view was, but that’s for another day (not soon).

As I studied DIS’s financials, I found that ESPN accounted for about 75% of the firm’s overall operating profit.  The movie studio, run by a former monorail driver at the theme parks, was a mess.  Income from the parks was depressed by recession.  The Disney brand was also almost completely dependent on female characters, making Disney attractions less appealing to half the adolescent population.  ESPN, on the other hand, was/is the dominant sports cable franchise in the US and was going from strength to strength.  For a moment–until I realized the marketing advantages of having the Disney name in the public eye–I wondered why the company didn’t just rename itself ESPN.

In addition, the simple percentage of earnings seemed to me to understate the importance of ESPN to DIS.  The movie business is typically a hit-or-miss affair and therefore doesn’t merit a premium multiple.  Same with the hotels/theme parks, because they have a lot of operating leverage and are highly sensitive to the business cycle.  So I concluded the key to the DIS story was the progression of its secular powerhouse–and its one high-multiple business–ESPN.  Nothing else mattered that much.  (Of course, I didn’t understand the full power of Marvel, or the turnaround in the Disney studio, or the subsequent acquisition of the Star Wars franchise, but that’s a separate issue.)

In 2012, ESPN began an effort to expand its business in a major way into the EU by bidding large amounts for broadcast rights to major soccer games in the UK.  Incumbent broadcasters, however, realized (correctly) that no matter what the cost it would be cheaper to keep ESPN out of their market than to deal with it once it had a foothold.  So they bid crazy-high prices for the rights. ESPN withdrew.

ESPN’s failure was disappointing in two ways.  A new avenue of growth was closed off.  At the same time, the attempt itself signaled that ESPN believed its existing Americas business was nearing, or entering, maturity.  That’s when I began easing toward the door.

The issues for ESPN–cord-cutting and the high fees ESPN charges–are very clear today.  What I find most surprising is that it took the market three years, and an announcement of subscriber losses by DIS, for the stock market to focus on them.  So much for Wall Street’s ability to anticipate/discount future events, even for a major company.

I don’t think ESPN is helping its long-term future by seeking to boost ratings by having personalities shout at each other in faux debates.  Nor does covering WWE as if it were a real sport.  I think they’re further signs of decay.  My sports-fan sensibilities aside, the real issue is about price.

Suppose every cable subscriber pays $4 a month to get ESPN, but only 15% actually watch sports–or would pay for ESPN if it weren’t part of the basic package.  If so, the real cost per user is closer to $30 a month, most of which is being unwittingly subsidized by non-users.  There’s only one way to find out if current users would be willing to pay $30 for ESPN, which is by removing the service from the bundle everyone must buy, reducing the basic cable charge by $4 a month, and offering ESPN separately.  That’s what the cable companies want–and what ESPN is looking to avoid.

We’re nowhere near the end of this story.  I don’t think the final chapter will be pretty for ESPN.

On the other hand, as I see it, just after the UK rebuffed ESPN, DIS began to direct its ESPN cash flows away from cable and toward building up its film and theme park businesses.  For me, this was the sensible thing to do.  And it confirmed my analysis of the situation with ESPN.

My bottom line:  for four years ESPN has been the cash cow that’s funding DIS’s expansion elsewhere.  Wall Street only realized this twelve months ago.   But DIS’s reinvention of itself is still a work in progress.  Until the market begins to view DIS as an entertainment company that happens to own ESPN rather than ESPN-with-bells-and-whistles the stock will continue to struggle.

 

 

Atlantic City casino gambling

May 23, 2016 By in Casinos, Uncategorized Tags: , , , 1 Comment

For a couple of years I was an adjunct at Rutgers business school.  I worked on a course where teams of MBA students provided management consulting services for actual companies.  For one project, one of my teams interviewed a pizza parlor owner about the key characteristics of his restaurant that attracted business.  He said:  good food, extensive menu, fast service, friendly staff, tablecloths on the tables.  These enabled him to get customers from as far as 7-8 miles away from his store.

How close was the nearest competitor?   …15 miles away.

All of the attributes he named may have been important to get any customers to his restaurant, but it’s hard not to think that distance is key to defining his market area.  That’s true of any generic bricks-and-mortar business.

…which brings us to Atlantic City.

That beach resort has had its annual gambling revenue cut in half since competing casinos began to open in neighboring Pennsylvania in late 2006.  Additions in Maryland and Delaware haven’t helped, either.  The issue is the same as with pizza. Absent some incredible attraction (think:  Las Vegas), the average gambler will typically choose the closest casino to patronize.

The response of government in New Jersey to the competitive threat has been quite odd, in my view.  It hasn’t been to build up the city as a resort destination or to improve transportation access.  The main thing I’ve seen has been the attempt several years ago to help yet another casino, the Revel, to open, adding new slot machines and table games to a market already awash in overcapacity.

Potential good news is that, after the closing of four casinos (Atlantic Club, Revel, Showboat and Trump Plaza) in 2014, the market appears to have stabilized.  Even online gambling is perking up, having brought in $16+ million in April (although this is still a far cry from the $80 million average monthly take the state had been touting when online was legalized).

The other side of the coin is that Trenton is again “helping” Atlantic City by opening the door to building two new casinos in northern New Jersey.  Local voters will vote on proposals later this year.  Maybe the idea is to stabilize the state’s gambling tax revenue at any cost.  But nothing seems to me more likely to snuff out a nascent recovery in AC than this.

 

am I reviving my Odds and Ends page?

November 18, 2015 By in Current Market Thoughts, Entertainment, Industry Analysis, internet, Retail Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I once thought that Odds and Ends would be a regular feature of my blog–a place to record information that might be useful but which had no immediate stock market urgency.  It hasn’t turned out that way.  I’m not sure why.

Fir the first time in a long while, however, I”m writing about two items that really belong there:  Activision and King Digital, and Urban Outfitters’ acquisition of a small upscale pizza business.  Here they are.

results from Disney (DIS): a lesson in how the market works nowadays

August 6, 2015 By in Cable, Constructing a Portfolio, Current Market Thoughts, Discounting, Entertainment, Industry Analysis Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

DIS and ESPN

A relative in the movie business called my attention to Marvel Entertainment a few years ago.  When it was acquired by DIS in late 2009, I held onto the stock I got and added more in the mid-$20 range Marvel, of course, has been pure gold for DIS, even though DIS initially went down on fears that DIS had overpaid.  Naturally I sold the stock way too early, in the mid-$60s–acting more like a value investor than a growth stock fan.

My first thought on reading the DIS 10-K, as I acquainted myself with the company,was that the company really should have been named ESPN, since at that time the cable sports network accounted for 2/3 of DIS’s overall operating profit and virtually all of its earnings growth.

red flags about ESPN

Over the past several years, a number of key warning signs have popped up about ESPN, however:

–ESPN decided to expand into the UK, signalling to me that it considered its US franchise on the cusp of maturity

–but ESPN was outbid for soccer rights by locals and effectively terminated its international expansion ideas–not good, either

–DIS began to shift cash flow away from ESPN and toward the movie and theme park business, which I took to be a sign of corporate worries about ESPN’s growth potential, rather than simply diversification for diversification’s sake

–serious discussion has begun over the past year about the demise of cable system bundled pricing, which likely benefits ESPN substantially (I suspect we’ll find out how substantially sooner rather than later)

–since ESPN.com’s recent format change, I find myself almost exclusively using Time Warner’s Bleacher Report for sports information

–personally, although this isn’t the most crucial part of my analysis, I think the progressive dumbing-down of ESPN coverage, in imitation of sports talk radio, to gain a wider audience will backfire.

To sum up,, there has been an increasing collection of evidence that ESPN probably won’t be the same growth engine for DIS that it has been in the past.

Yet…

…DIS shares were down by about 10% in Wednesday trading (in an up market) on the first signs in the earnings report of the factors I’ve just listed.

discounting?

Where was the market’s discounting mechanism, which in the past has been continuously evaluating corporate strategy and factoring worries like the long list I’ve mentioned above into the stock price?

…only on the earnings report, not before

To my mind, DIS trading yesterday is another indicator that information isn’t flowing on Wall Street as fast as it once did.  That’s neither good nor bad;  it’s just the way the game is being played in today’s world.  What we as investors have got to figure out is how to adjust our own behavior to fit altered circumstances.

My initial thought is that it may be riskier than it has been to dabble in down-and-out industries like mining or oil until the final bad news has hit income statements.

 

Macau casinos

July 2, 2015 By in Asian economic development, Casinos, China, economics, Entertainment, Hong Kong, Macau Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

I haven’t written about the Macau casinos for some time, mostly because I haven’t had anything useful to say.  The fact that I’ve called this group horribly wrongly over the past year or so hasn’t encouraged me to make predictions, either.

I’ve traded around in the group (and, in the case of Wynn Macau and Sands China, their US parents, as well) but have kept my overall position size by and large intact.  Shows what I know.

It has seemed to me, wrongly, that all of the bad news about the casinos in Macau has been in the public domain for some time.  The anti-corruption campaign being waged by Beijing–that has made high rollers wary of exhibiting their wealth at the gaming tables–has been going on since 2013.  Restrictions on visitation rights from the mainland to Macau put in place last year have done the rest of the damage.

Both of these factors have been well-known for a long time.  Therefore, it has seemed to me, much/most of the potential damage had to already be factored into the prices of the stocks.

Wrong! The Macau casino stocks have been sold down again and again when the SAR’s gaming authority has announced each month the (highly predictable) year on year gambling revenue decline.  Figuring we were at the bottom six months ago as far as the stocks are concerned, as I did, has clearly been the wrong position to take.

As I’m writing this on Wednesday night, however, the stocks I pay particular attention to–Wynn Macau, Sands China and Galaxy Entertainment–are each up by more than 10%.

Why is this?

It’s because the mainland has rescinded the travel restrictions it inaugurated in 2014.  As far as visiting is concerned, we’re back to the older, more favorable rules.  This plus has been already reflected in US trading over the past two days, but only in overnight trading tonight in Hong Kong.

Are we at the bottom now?

For someone like me, who already has a significant position, this question has no action-related relevance.  And, as I’ve mentioned above, I’ve been wrong about these stocks for a considerable time.  Still, it’s hard to ignore a 10%-15% increase in stock prices.  Also, the second half of 2014 was the period when the Macau gambling market began a serious swoon. Therefore, year on year comparisons for the overall market should soon begin to improve.  We don’t need current results to get any better.  More than anything, the improving comparisons will be coming from deterioration in the base year, 2014.

So. yes, I think this is the bottom.

I also think that the upturn in the gambling market won’t be a rising tide that lifts all boats, was it has been in the past.  I think Wynn Macau, and to a lesser extent, Galaxy Entertainment, have the most to gain.