Disney's CEO, Is Bob Bob's future?

$Walt Disney(DIS)$Changing coaches can be described as a stone stirring up thousands of waves. Bob Iger, 71, has just stepped down from the position of CEO for only two years, and is once again in command temporarily. On the first trading day (November 21st) after the announcement of the news, Disney's share price rose by 6.3%, which seems to be a portrayal of shareholders' current situation of Disney.

Why do you want to change coaches?

Bob Chapek, the fired CEO, was picked up by Bob Iger, and the two names are very similar. The 71-year-old eldest brother returned to the Jianghu, and had the meaning of cleaning up the mess for his younger brother.

Left: Iger, right: Chapek

According to the rules of US stocks, top migrant workers often have a special reward for sharing the company's share price from taking office to resigning. Unfortunately, Chapek didn't catch up with the good times and didn't manage the company's share price well.

Iger, who had just returned, fired Chapek's trusted ally, Kareem Daniel, who was in charge of the group's streaming strategy on the first day of his return, and it was obvious that he was not satisfied with Disney's streaming strategy.

According to reports, Disney's internal covert operation against Chapeck began this summer.

In August, billionaire activist investor Dan Loeb unveiled Disney shares in his hedge fund Third Point, which he disclosed in a letter to Bob Chapek

Urged the company to consider divesting ESPN, cutting costs and adding as part of a comprehensive restructuring aimed at boosting the company's shareholder value.

Among them, ESPN split this item has been used by hedge funds. Compared with other large media companies, there are such cases, including Warner's$Warner Bros. Discovery(WBD)$It was also split and listed in the first half of this year. This is mainly a consideration of shareholders' equity.

The more important consideration lies in the company strategy, such as:Cut costs.

The trigger is Disney's performance this year. Take the results of Q4 (as of September 30th) just announced, the streaming media business lost $1.47 billion in the latest quarter, more than double the loss in the same period last year, and also reached the company's preset loss ceiling ($1.5 billion in a single quarter).

Of course, this has something to do with Chapek's strategy.He is more inclined to create growth rate.

Three years after its establishment, Disney + has more than 164 million users, which is three quarters of Netflix's, while the whole platform users including Hulu have reached 236 million, exceeding Netflix's 223 million.

However, Disney's growth rate is due to the high cost, and the huge losses brought by streaming media just offset the strong performance of theme parks and consumer goods business after the epidemic recovered. In addition, the US stock market as a whole is under the pressure of high inflation and interest rate hikes this year.Disney's share price has fallen by more than 40% this year.

It is natural for shareholders to be dissatisfied.

What will happen to Iger's admission?

Obviously, the veteran must solve the urgent need. For Disney, that is how to turn the loss of streaming media into profit.

In fact, a few days after the financial report was announced on November 8th, Disney began to announce layoffs, and Chapek personally sent an employee letter. But it took so long to start laying off employees, seems to be under great pressure from the board of directors. Disney's previous architecture may be somewhat redundant. On the first day of Iger's return, he announced that he would reorganize. He has commissioned a team of executives to design "A new structure that puts more decision-making power back into the hands of our creative team and rationalizes costs ".

Because layoffs are not the focus of Disney, IP still plays a leading role.

Disney has always maintained its IP, although most of the top streams have been acquired, including Pixar's Toy Story series, Lucas's Star Wars series and the whole Marvel Universe.

The first is the monetization ability of IP.

When Iger stepped down in early 2020, Disney had seven films that had grossed more than $1 billion at the global box office in the past year, compared with just two this year. Of course, COVID-19 is an important reason, but now it has almost recovered, and the box office performance is still sluggish.

The climax of Marvel's third stage, which ended in Avengers 4 and Spider-Man: Heroic Expedition, is hard to be happy. In addition, Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans ended their contracts, and Chadwick Boseman, the Black Panther, had an unexpected trend, and the market suddenly became somewhat green and yellow.

The difficulty of content creation is that the audience is always waiting for surprises, and the aesthetic fatigue of content is an inevitable event. Presumably, after Iger took over, the focus on content was to polish IP into a product that continuously produced value, rather than a sequel that constantly consumed the audience's goodwill.

Secondly, the ability to deal with market public relations and even international relations.

Chapek made several mistakes at home:

    When COVID-19 just saw the improvement, it was eager to directly raise the price of Disney theme parks, such as the Genie + plan, which ruined the fan margin;
    Streaming media developed too hastily and almost became hostile to Hollywood, the most famous of which was the lawsuit against Scarlett Johnson, a black widow;
    In order to emphasize political correctness (Chapek himself deep blue), it violated the restrictions of the Republican-governed Florida Week (i.e. prohibiting discussion of LGBTQ + topics in class)

In fact, Chapek also annoyed China.

In a telephone conference in early 22, because he was dissatisfied with China's policy against COVID-19, Chapek casually said, "Whether there is a Chinese market has little impact on us", which was regarded as an unfriendly statement. Colleagues, Mulan, Shangqi and other films also carry some "private goods" because of "political correctness", which attracts dissatisfaction from domestic counterparts.

Therefore,None of the 10 works in the fourth stage of Marvel Universe have been shown in Chinese mainland.

When Iger was in office, he was very friendly to China, which not only promoted cultural and investment cooperation, but also contributed to the completion of Shanghai Disneyland.

From the perspective of Disney Company and Chinese fans,A more friendly attitude is a win-win situation.

Iger is definitely the best person to return to Disney now.

First,His near-mythical position in the company, can carry out the reform very smoothly, which is encouraging to both employees and investors;

Second,He used to have a lot of God-operated acquisitions, also let shareholders believe that there may be more magic pens in the future;

In fact, not only Disney shareholders want him back, but Hollywood also wants him back. After all, since the change of streaming media, Netflix has begun to reshape the traditional Hollywood market. Although streaming media is on a roll, it is the expectation of all media people to return to the content itself.

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  • WayneEvans
    ·2022-11-22
    Hope so. Cannot believe DIS rose so much yesterday.
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  • JohnnyYoung
    ·2022-11-22
    Dow Jones / traditional stocks are very strong now.
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  • HilaryWilde
    ·2022-11-25
    In any case, the fundamentals of DIS don't appeal to me at all right now.
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  • PandoraHaggai
    ·2022-11-25
    Cutting costs is certainly the right thing for Disney to do.
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  • IZTan
    ·2022-11-24
    up up up please
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  • DragonTycoon
    ·2022-11-23
    why fix something that ain’t broken
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  • Nanamoney
    ·2022-11-22
    ok good sharing
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  • EvanHolt
    ·2022-11-25
    DIS's losses are indeed excessive.
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  • BellaFaraday
    ·2022-11-25
    I'm sure Disney will get back on track soon.
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  • MortimerDodd
    ·2022-11-25
    Hopefully, the management change will help DIS.
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  • Tiger0007
    ·2022-11-24
    Marvel for disney [Happy]
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  • Hafiz222888
    ·2022-11-27
    ok
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  • CKGOH
    ·2022-11-24
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  • Lexcool
    ·2022-11-24
    cool
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  • Raisetothemoon
    ·2022-11-24
    Strong
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  • yang6533
    ·2022-11-24
    Ok
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  • Chichiw76
    ·2022-11-24
    okie
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  • PRO AMD
    ·2022-11-24
    b
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  • Jayliew
    ·2022-11-24
    h
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  • Jimmychow
    ·2022-11-24
    K
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