Tag Archives: DIS

my take on Disney (DIS)

March 19, 2020 By in securities analysis, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

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.”

 

 

 

 

Disney (DIS), Comcast (CMCSA) and Fox (FOX)

June 21, 2018 By in mergers and acquisitions, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

I started watching the Murdoch family in the mid-1980s, when I was managing a large Australian portfolio.  The original business of News Corp, the parent of FOX, was politically-oriented media targeted at right-of-center blue collar workers in Australia.  As I saw it, News consistently traded positive news coverage to its right-of-center audience in return for regulatory favors.  Rupert Murdoch’s genius was to replicate this model on successively larger stages, first in the UK and then in the US.

Today–again, as I see it–Rupert is moving to turn the family business over to his two sons, on the idea that they will follow in his footsteps as he did his father’s.  This desire has two implications for the bidding war between DIS and CMCSA for  the FOX media assets:

–the Murdoch family wants equity, not cash.  That’s only partly for tax reasons (because taking cash would presumably trigger a big capital gains bill, while taking equity in the successor company wouldn’t).  Just as important,

–the next generation of Murdochs wants to continue to have a seat at the media table.  The fact that they would own a lot of DIS stock and the fact that there’s no clear successor to the current DIS chairman make it an ideal landing spot.  Comcast, in contrast, is another family-controlled company.  The last thing Comcast wants is to let in a potentially powerful internal rival.  This means CMCSA issuing stock is probably out of the question–and certainly not the favored class of stock the Roberts family uses to maintain control.  So Comcast doesn’t suit the Murdochs at all.

 

Most institutional investors don’t pay taxes, so they’re indifferent to whether they get stock or cash.

 

I don’t think it’s an accident that the Comcast offer for FOX is at a level that more than compensates any long-term holder of FOX for the tax he would owe on selling.  In other words, FOX directors can’t use the grounds that they’re “protecting” shareholders from tax by rejecting the Comcast offer in favor of DIS.  After the Supreme Court ruling allowing the ATT/Time Warner merger, they may not be able to argue that a Comcast/Fox merger would run afoul of regulators, either.

 

At first blush, the Comcast position seems a lot weaker than DIS’s.  The Murdochs want to sell to DIS and, I think, actively don’t want to sell to Comcast.  As for DIS, it faces a continuing problem finding places to reinvest its huge media cash flows.  And opportunities like FOX don’t turn up every day.

What is Comcast’s strategy?   My guess is that it’s hoping to raise the offer price to a point where DIS drops out and public pressure forces FOX to sell itself to Comcast.  From what I can tell, it would likely need a partner to do so.

I’ve got no desire to participate, but this will be an interesting battle to watch.

 

 

Verizon (VZ) and Disney (DIS)

July 13, 2017 By in mergers and acquisitions, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

A short while ago, rumors began circulating on Wall Street that VZ is interested in acquiring DIS.

Yesterday, the CEO of VZ said the company has no interest.

some sense…

The rumors made a little sense, in my view, for two reasons:

–the cellphone market in the US is maturing.  The main competitors to VZ all appear to be acquiring content producers to make that the next battleground for attracting and keeping customers, and

–the Japanese firm Softbank, which controls Sprint, seems intent on disrupting the current service price structure in the same way is did years ago in its home country.

…but really?

On the other hand, it seems to me that DIS is too big a mouthful for VZ to swallow.

How so?

–DIS and VZ are both about the same size, each with total equity value of around $175 billion.  If we figure that VZ would have to offer (at least) a 20% premium to the current DIS stock price, the total bill would be north of $200 billion.

How would VZ finance a large deal like this?  VZ’s first instinct would be to use debt.  But it already has $115 billion in borrowings on the balance sheet, so an additional $200 billion might be hard to manage, even though DIS is relatively debt-free.

Equity?  …a combination of debt and equity?

An open question is whether shareholders in an entertainment company like DIS would be content to hold shares in a quasi-utility.  If not, VZ shares might come under enough pressure for both parties to want to tear up a potential agreement.

dismember DIS?

VZ might also think of selling off the pieces of DIS–like the theme parks–that it doesn’t want.  The issue here is that all the parts of DIS, except maybe ESPN, are increasingly closely interwoven through cross-promotion, theme park attractions and merchandise marketing.  So it’s not clear the company can be neatly sectioned off.

Also, as the history of DIS’s film efforts illustrates, the company is not only a repository of intellectual property.  It’s the product of the work of a cadre of highly creative entertainers.  Retaining key people after a takeover–particularly if it were an unfriendly one–would be a significant worry.

From what might be considered an office politics point of view, VZ’s top management must have to consider the possibility that after a short amount of time, they would be ushered out the door and the DIS management would take their place running the combined firm.  Would key DIS decision makers want to work for a communications utility?

my bottom line

All in all, an interesting rumor in the sense that it highlights the weakness of VZ’s competitive position, but otherwise hard to believe.

 

 

 

Disney (DIS) and ESPN: a lesson in analyzing conglomerates

May 25, 2017 By in conglomerates, earnings surprise, securities markets, strong earnings, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

DIS shares went on a fabulous run after the company acquired Marvel in late 2009, moving from $26 a share to $120 in early 2015.  Since then, however, the stock has been moving sideways to down–despite rising, consensus estimate-beating earnings reports in a stock market that has generally been rising.

What’s going on?

The basic thing to understand about analyzing a conglomerate like DIS is that aggregate earnings and earnings growth matter far less than evaluating each business in the conglomerate by itself and assembling a sum of the parts valuation, including synergies, of course.

In the case of DIS, the company consists of ESPN + television; theme parks; movies; merchandising related mostly to parks and movies; and odds and ends–which analysts typically ignore.

In late 2009, something like 2/3 of the company’s overall earnings and, in my view, 80%+ of the DIS market value came from ESPN.

How so?

At that time, ex Pixar, the movie business was hit and miss; the theme parks, always very sensitive to the business cycle, were at their lows; because of this, merchandise sales were similarly in the doldrums.  ESPN, on the other hand, was a secular growth business, with expanding reach in the global sports world and, consequently, dependably expanding profits.

ESPN profits not only made up the majority of the DIS conglomerate’s earnings, the market also awarded those profits the highest PE multiple among the DIS businesses.

At the time, I thought that if truth in labeling were an issue, the company should rename itself ESPN–although that would probably have detracted from the value of the remaining, Disney-branded, business lines.

Then 2012 rolled around.

More tomorrow.

 

Disney (DIS): the valuation issue

February 10, 2017 By in Cable, earnings surprise, Entertainment, securities markets, strong earnings, Uncategorized Tags: , , , 4 Comments

Long-time readers may recall that I became interested in DIS in late 2009, the company acquired Marvel Entertainment, a stock I held, for stock and cash.

corporate structure

I hadn’t looked at DIS for years before that.  I quickly learned that DIS was a conglomerate, that is, a type of company where the most useful analysis comes taking the sum of its constituent parts.

I knew the company’s movie business had been struggling for some time and the theme parks were being hit hard by recession.  Still, I was more than mildly surprised that ESPN (plus other media that we can safely ignore) made up somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of DIS’s operating earnings.  Why did they still call it Disney?

multiples

Given that the parks are a highly cyclical business and movies moderately so–meaning the PE applied to those earnings should be relatively low–and that ESPN was showing all the characteristics of a secular growth business–meaning high PE–I thought that ESPN represented at least 80% of the market capitalization of DIS.  (That’s despite the fact that the market would apply a higher than normal multiple to cyclically depressed results).

So DIS was basically ESPN with bells and whistles.

ESPN’s turning point

In 2012, ESPN made a major effort to enter the UK sports entertainment market.  To my mind, this wasn’t a particularly good sign, since it implied ESPN believed the domestic market was maturing.  Worse, ESPN lost the bidding, closing out its path to growth through geographic expansion.

It seemed to me that DIS management, which I regard as excellent, understood clearly what was happening.  It began to redirect corporate cash flow away from ESPN and toward the movie and theme park business, which had better growth prospects, and where it has since had unusually good success.

2014-16 results

Over the past two fiscal years (DIS’s accounting year ends in September), the company’s line of business results look like this:

ESPN +        revenues up by +11.9%, operating earnings by +6%

parks           revenues up by +12%, op earnings  +24%

movies        revenues up by +30%, op earnings +74%

merchandise   revenues up by +4.6%, op earnings +33%.

the valuation issue

ESPN has gone ex growth.  This implies these earnings no longer deserve a premium PE multiple.  To me, the fact that ESPN now treats WWE as a sport (!!) just underlines its troubles.

The other businesses are booming.  But they’re also cyclical.  So while improving efficiency implies multiple expansion, earnings approaching a cyclical high note implies at least some multiple contraction.

Because the two businesses are so different, I think Wall Street is making a mistake in treating earnings from the two as more or less equal.

calculating…

DIS will most likely earn $6 a share or so this fiscal year.  That will be something like $3 from ESPN and $3 from the rest.

Take the parks… first.  Let’s say I’d be willing to pay 18x earnings for their earnings.  If that’s the right number, then these businesses make up $54 a share in DIS value.

Now ESPN.  If we assume that the worst is over for ESPN in terms of subscriber and revenue-per-subscriber losses, we can argue that the future earnings stream looks like a bond’s.  If we think that ESPN should yield, say, 5% (a 20x earnings multiple), that would mean ESPN is worth $60 of DIS’s market cap.  If we’d still on the downslope, that figure could be a lot too high.

$54 + $60 = $114.  Current stock price:  $109.

my bottom line

My back of the envelope calculation for the parks… segment may be a bit too low.  I could also be persuaded that my figure for ESPN is too rich, but it would take a lot to make me want to move the needle higher for it.

Yes, most of DIS’s earnings are US-sourced, so the company could be a big winner from domestic income tax reform.

But if I were to be holding a fully valued stock on the idea of a tax reform boost, I’d prefer one with more solid underpinnings.  At $90, maybe the stock is interesting.  But I think ESPN–the multiple as much as the future earnings–remains a significant risk.