DIS can be seen as a collection of only loosely connected businesses: ESPN; the ABC television network; Disney theme parks; and Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm and Disney movies.
The sharpest line of separation can be drawn between ESPN (or ESPN + ABC), on the one hand, and the DIS animation, film and theme park businesses, on the other.
When I began to examine DIS stock about a decade ago, my first thought was that the company should change its name to ESPN, to reflect the fact that ESPN represented about three-quarters of the company’s earnings and virtually all of its growth.
That situation has changed dramatically during Bob Iger’s tenure as chairman, on two fronts.
–Iger fixed the formerly ailing Disney movie studio. He acquired Marvel and Lucasfilms, which provided DIS with rich sources of underdeveloped content, as well as a collection of male characters to balance its previously almost completely female lineup. In addition, the new characters allowed the theme parks to increase their attractions and merchandising to become a more important part of the profit picture.
–ESPN’s profits stopped growing. This changed its investment attraction from earnings expansion to cash flow generation. The shift arguably makes the case for splitting DIS up into ESPN and the residual DIS a stronger one, since the company now seems to consist of an income component and a capital gains one.
Arguably, investors interested in capital gains would pay a higher price for residual DIS earnings if they didn’t have to worry about ESPN. Income-oriented investors would pay a higher price for ESPN cash flow if it were being dividended to them and if they didn’t have the unwanted risk of the business cycle sensitivity of the residual DIS businesses.
why I think a voluntary breakup won’t happen
Two reasons:
–ESPN cash flow may be in slow secular decline. But it is still a large and convenient source of funding for the rest of DIS, and
–the current market cap of DIS is $160 billion, too large to be a takeover target. Post-breakup DIS would have a market cap of, to pluck a figure out of the air, $85 billion. Yes, that’s a large number, but it would change the takeover calculation from impossible to hard-but-doable.
So management likely has zero interest in breaking the company up.