Iger out in 2018

[George]

If the decision has been made to go public (or attempt to do so), that disclosure would likely be required. However, repurchases that are being done with a view to possibly making going private easier in the future, should the company decide to do so, wouldn't trigger a disclosure requirement. That being said, the possibility of Disney planning (or even considering) going private without a new investor putting up huge money is almost inconceivable. Dell had Michael Dell. Disney has no such large owner.


Wrong. There are two main reasons that companies repurchase stock. First, because they believe that the market is undervaluing the company and therefore buying its own stock is a good investment. While you could describe that as "supporting the stock price", that would be an inordinately pejorative way of describing it. Second reason is because the Company has decided it wants to return cash to shareholders, and chooses to do it via stock repurchases rather than a dividend. I find repurchases to be a more efficient means of returning cash shareholders, as it allows shareholders to decide whether to turn in all or a portion of their holdings for cash, rather than requiring them to do so, as a dividend would.


The execs are no doubt tired of some of Wall Street's tendencies. But the access to cheap financing overwhelms all of that. And the math makes it easy to see why. With a market cap of $163 billion, every 1/100th of a percentage point less that the market demands as a return on investment implicitly saves the company $16.3 million per year.

Disney used to print out their stock certificates on better paper. Also, you can't buy candy and the like with them at our local convenience store, so one has to surmise the certificates are worthless.

 

[Goofyernmost]

The ONLY way Iger is getting into political office is as an political appointee, Just look at Iger's cringeworthy performance at the NFL bid (yes there is video for the masochistic) and tell me how he's going to perform on the campaign trail. The guy has the personality and delivery of a dead fish.

Could actually be a refreshing change!

 

[TsWade2]

I don't know who is going to be the next ceo of disney, but if I can make a guess, I would go with Ben Sherwood if he successfully fixed Disney Channel. Of course, it could be someone else. But what I want for a new ceo of Disney is to be creative and respect the whole legacy of Disney. And again, this is just a guess of who is going to be. I hope it's not that godawful businesswoman Anne Sweeney.

 

[Bacon]

Tony Baxter please

 

[Goofyernmost]

Tony Baxter please

Then you'd have someone with spectacular creative ability, but, no money to do any of them. I'm afraid that Disney needs more then Tony Baxter.

 

[Genie_naughty_whispers]

Kathleen Kennedy should replace Iger and Filoni should replace Kennedy at Lucasfilm.

 

[22YrsDVC]

I'm applying

Bolt, do you need an Executive Administrative Assistant?

 

[216bruce]

There's also a certain niche in the Disney animation fandom that despises Iger because traditional animation was discontinued on his watch.

For me, this is THE negative. Hand drawn could have still carried on with little to no financial impact and just been a loss leader at worst for the company...a fly on the rump of a huge company. Other than that, the guy has done what a CEO is supposed to do for the entire company. A lot more hits than misses. He isn't perfect, but the company is stronger, the stock price higher and it's product is more popular than it was when he took the job. You may not 'like' him, he may have been on watch when your favorite light bulb burned out, or bathroom floor didn't get washed, or ride went down, but overall he's done well.
The ESPN issue is much larger than just the channel(s) themselves...it's the whole pro sports mess and it's finally, maybe, reaching a tipping point.

 

[ford91exploder]

For me, this is THE negative. Hand drawn could have still carried on with little to no financial impact and just been a loss leader at worst for the company...a fly on the rump of a huge company. Other than that, the guy has done what a CEO is supposed to do for the entire company. A lot more hits than misses. He isn't perfect, but the company is stronger, the stock price higher and it's product is more popular than it was when he took the job. You may not 'like' him, he may have been on watch when your favorite light bulb burned out, or bathroom floor didn't get washed, or ride went down, but overall he's done well.
The ESPN issue is much larger than just the channel(s) themselves...it's the whole pro sports mess and it's finally, maybe, reaching a tipping point.

I'd beg to differ, ALL of Disney's most profitable businesses (Media Networks/P&R/Consumer Products) are in a declining top line revenue mode, The movie studios don't even move the needle when it comes to cash flow to TWDC, The ONLY thing that is propping up the whole house of cards is the stock price. If you normalize EPS to remove the effects of share repurchases, With that view EPS is flat to declining Remember since Iger took over TWDC has repurchased approximately 28% of outstanding shares.

Lucasfilm (SW, Indy) was a good purchase by Iger, He FAR overpaid for Marvel, Disney could have bought Marvel for perhaps 1-1.5 billion because at the time NOBODY WANTED IT and Disney was the ONLY bidder, the pricetag was ego driven so Iger could say I did the BIGGEST IP DEAL blah, blah, blah.

As to the Pro sports thing Iger is doubling down on overpaying for rights at ESPN the NFL deal was not bad enough he's now trying to do a worse one. If I were a cynic I'd say Iger's trying to bribe his way into a NFL ownership group post Disney i.e. "look how much revenue I brought the league YOU OWE ME", The owners 'We don't owe you squat - cue laughter from owners'

Disney NOW is a far weaker company than it was when Iger took it over.

 

[Daveeeeed]

I'd beg to differ, ALL of Disney's most profitable businesses (Media Networks/P&R/Consumer Products) are in a declining top line revenue mode, The movie studios don't even move the needle when it comes to cash flow to TWDC, The ONLY thing that is propping up the whole house of cards is the stock price. If you normalize EPS to remove the effects of share repurchases, With that view EPS is flat to declining Remember since Iger took over TWDC has repurchased approximately 28% of outstanding shares.

Lucasfilm (SW, Indy) was a good purchase by Iger, He FAR overpaid for Marvel, Disney could have bought Marvel for perhaps 1-1.5 billion because at the time NOBODY WANTED IT and Disney was the ONLY bidder, the pricetag was ego driven so Iger could say I did the BIGGEST IP DEAL blah, blah, blah.

As to the Pro sports thing Iger is doubling down on overpaying for rights at ESPN the NFL deal was not bad enough he's now trying to do a worse one. If I were a cynic I'd say Iger's trying to bribe his way into a NFL ownership group post Disney i.e. "look how much revenue I brought the league YOU OWE ME", The owners 'We don't owe you squat - cue laughter from owners'

Disney NOW is a far weaker company than it was when Iger took it over.

Well, it seems like the next CEO should be elected by the United States. #MakeDisneyDisneyAgain

 

[jakeman]

I'd beg to differ, ALL of Disney's most profitable businesses (Media Networks/P&R/Consumer Products) are in a declining top line revenue mode, The movie studios don't even move the needle when it comes to cash flow to TWDC, The ONLY thing that is propping up the whole house of cards is the stock price. If you normalize EPS to remove the effects of share repurchases, With that view EPS is flat to declining Remember since Iger took over TWDC has repurchased approximately 28% of outstanding shares.

Lucasfilm (SW, Indy) was a good purchase by Iger, He FAR overpaid for Marvel, Disney could have bought Marvel for perhaps 1-1.5 billion because at the time NOBODY WANTED IT and Disney was the ONLY bidder, the pricetag was ego driven so Iger could say I did the BIGGEST IP DEAL blah, blah, blah.

As to the Pro sports thing Iger is doubling down on overpaying for rights at ESPN the NFL deal was not bad enough he's now trying to do a worse one. If I were a cynic I'd say Iger's trying to bribe his way into a NFL ownership group post Disney i.e. "look how much revenue I brought the league YOU OWE ME", The owners 'We don't owe you squat - cue laughter from owners'

Disney NOW is a far weaker company than it was when Iger took it over.

Perhaps I don't understand the meaning of the word revenue as I'm not a finance guy, or a marketing guy, or an IT guy, or physicist, or engineer, or sailor, or whatever else you are an expert in with your Google-fu, but it seems like if revenue were declining that would be something that would be something that would be easy to graph right? Like the graph would be pointing...you know...down over time? Isn't that how graphs work?

 

[216bruce]

I'd beg to differ, ALL of Disney's most profitable businesses (Media Networks/P&R/Consumer Products) are in a declining top line revenue mode, The movie studios don't even move the needle when it comes to cash flow to TWDC, The ONLY thing that is propping up the whole house of cards is the stock price. If you normalize EPS to remove the effects of share repurchases, With that view EPS is flat to declining Remember since Iger took over TWDC has repurchased approximately 28% of outstanding shares.

Lucasfilm (SW, Indy) was a good purchase by Iger, He FAR overpaid for Marvel, Disney could have bought Marvel for perhaps 1-1.5 billion because at the time NOBODY WANTED IT and Disney was the ONLY bidder, the pricetag was ego driven so Iger could say I did the BIGGEST IP DEAL blah, blah, blah.

As to the Pro sports thing Iger is doubling down on overpaying for rights at ESPN the NFL deal was not bad enough he's now trying to do a worse one. If I were a cynic I'd say Iger's trying to bribe his way into a NFL ownership group post Disney i.e. "look how much revenue I brought the league YOU OWE ME", The owners 'We don't owe you squat - cue laughter from owners'

Disney NOW is a far weaker company than it was when Iger took it over.

I'm not a finance guy so assuming any of what you wrote is real and makes sense (it could be Klingon as far as I know) then well, OK...so the company is then near collapse financially, the movies really don't matter and the whole thing revolves around Bob getting an NFL ownership. Wow, all I'm looking at is the number of box office smashes and general dominance in that medium via their original brand, Marvel and Lucasfilm, the increase in DVC properties and cruise ships, generally solid park attendance, my tripling in stock price since I bought most of it and the total saturation of toys, apparel, books, etc. for kids when I walk in to Target...I don't know how the guy still has a job. The board must be a bunch of shmoes.

 

[asianway]

Perhaps I don't understand the meaning of the word revenue as I'm not a finance guy, or a marketing guy, or an IT guy, or physicist, or engineer, or sailor, or whatever else you are an expert in with your Google-fu, but it seems like if revenue were declining that would be something that would be something that would be easy to graph right? Like the graph would be pointing...you know...down over time? Isn't that how graphs work?

The word he would be looking for is "same store" revenue which could go down while overall revenues are going up.

Not saying thats the case here, havent looked at the financials in detail lately.

 

[jakeman]

The word he would be looking for is "same store" revenue which could go down while overall revenues are going up.

Not saying thats the case here, havent looked at the financials in detail lately.

That term must not be on the first page of the Google search.

 

[LuvtheGoof]

Well, the numbers don't support the doom & gloom view at all. Charts are nice at times:

Really looks like an upward trend to me over the last 4 years. Oh, and their quarters are offset from calendar quarters. Their first fiscal quarter is actually Oct-Dec, so that is usually their best quarter, since it includes the holidays.

 

[LuvtheGoof]

So even more fun with charts:

I don't know how much more upward you can get.

 

[ford91exploder]

Guess you did not pay attention to the last earnings call where consumer products revenue was down 7%, ESPN revenue down and P&R revenue down.

Also I don't see those numbers normalized for the DECREASE in shares outstanding, But delude yourself about how great a company TWDC is, Oh and the newest BoD member Jack Dorsey, Yeah TWTR is doing really well

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-26/twitter-crashes-after-slashing-revenue-forecast and it's just getting worse over in tweeterland

Disney does SUCH a good job of picking Winners, Being a contrarian I picked up facebook when everyone hated it, Hmm that worked out well for me.

 

[jakeman]

Guess you did not pay attention to the last earnings call where consumer products revenue was down 7%, ESPN revenue down and P&R revenue down.

I don't think we are deluding ourselves into anything. I know I for one have been very forthcoming in that I may not understand finances. Like the the link below:

https://ditm-twdc-us.storage.googleapis.com/q2_fy16_earnings.pdf

Where is says:

Media Networks revenues for the quarter were relatively flat at $5.8 billion...

Parks and Resorts revenues for the quarter increased 4% to $3.9 billion...

Studio Entertainment revenues for the quarter increased 22% to $2.1 billion...

Consumer Products & Interactive Media revenues for the quarter decreased 2% to $1.2 billion...

That very well could be the same thing as your saying, even though the words are different and the numbers don't match.

 

[LuvtheGoof]

Guess you did not pay attention to the last earnings call where consumer products revenue was down 7%, ESPN revenue down and P&R revenue down.

Also I don't see those numbers normalized for the DECREASE in shares outstanding, But delude yourself about how great a company TWDC is, Oh and the newest BoD member Jack Dorsey, Yeah TWTR is doing really well

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-26/twitter-crashes-after-slashing-revenue-forecast and it's just getting worse over in tweeterland

Disney does SUCH a good job of picking Winners, Being a contrarian I picked up facebook when everyone hated it, Hmm that worked out well for me.

Guess you didn't pay attention to the graph at all. It clearly shows that revenue does drop in certain quarters, and then rises in others in a very clear cycle. The over-all trend is a rise in all income.

 

[SorcererMC]

Guess you didn't pay attention to the graph at all. It clearly shows that revenue does drop in certain quarters, and then rises in others in a very clear cycle. The over-all trend is a rise in all income.

To be precise, there is a drop in Q4 EPS (July-Aug-Sept) on an annual basis over the last few years, per this CNBC quarterly earnings chart I pulled today and can be found here http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/DIS/tab/5

I'm assuming that this is due to an increased P&R operating expenses during the summer and the decrease in P&R attendance in September.

Re: TWDC yearly performance graph, looking across business segments, one can see that the growth is largely found in the Media Networks and P&R. Expecting the upward trend since ~2011 to continue is problematic, due to 1. the ESPN issues (which really is not my bailiwick but many others have explained them on these boards) and 2. the record Orlando tourist boom 2011-15 fueled by international tourists and new park offerings is likely on the decline until 2019-20? (when new lands open).
IMO, if TWDC manages to keep increasing revenue over the next year and a half or so, it will be due to P&R cuts and limited price increases. (I'll be surprised if they meet expectations this upcoming Q3 earnings call). I really don't know what they would do on the Media Networks side, so if someone could fill that in.....

Edit: It also looks like the Q1 holiday season and Q3 festivals are driving P&R attendance and revenue; hence the spring price hikes and upcharge events.