Disney stock price will be in the cellar again by the end of the week. Iger brought in the woke and bringing him back is just doubling down on more of the same. The parks have priced themselves out he general public. Since 2010, my family has been Disney World 5 times. We have no plans to return - it was always expensive but now it’s ridiculous and with less service. You used to have free bus service from the airport-gone. Free fast pass -gone - replaced with geni + which you have to pay for but doesn’t guarantee you get any of the rides you want. What the f*ck?!

And on the movie side Kennedy will continue to destroy the original characters and bring in more purple hair heroines. Marvel the same. Pixar the same.

I used to enjoy going to Disney like big kid. But I guess that’s over. And virtually none of the movies appeal to me.

Thanks for the memories and experiences with the family.

"Disney’s growing reputation for championing woke causes is costing it more than just its tax exemptions. It is now clearly damaging its relationship with audiences. As recently as March 2021, Disney’s public-approval rating was 77 per cent. But a September poll finds approval for Disney has now fallen to only 51 per cent among all Americans. And it has fallen into negative territory among Republicans. As pollster Chris Wilson notes: ‘It is highly unusual for a family entertainment company to find itself outside the good graces of so many Americans.’

"A leaked internal video from earlier this year shows that Disney’s woke turn is very much part of a top-down agenda. Disney corporate president Karey Burke, herself a proud mother of ‘one transgender child and one pansexual child’, has lobbied for Disney to include ‘many, many, many LGBTQIA characters’ in its stories. She has even called for 50 per cent of Disney characters to be either ‘LGBTQIA’ or racial minorities."

https://www.spiked-online.com/...s-costing-it-dearly/

What are the odds that one woman has TWO kids with gender confusion? Seems she's a likely cause...

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
"A leaked internal video from earlier this year shows that Disney’s woke turn is very much part of a top-down agenda. Disney corporate president Karey Burke, herself a proud mother of ‘one transgender child and one pansexual child’, has lobbied for Disney to include ‘many, many, many LGBTQIA characters’ in its stories. She has even called for 50 per cent of Disney characters to be either ‘LGBTQIA’ or racial minorities."

Chairman of the Disney Board, Susan Arnold is a lesbian. Arguably the most high-profile/powerful alphabet-person corporate head, along with Apple's Tim Cook

Disney: Once Great, But Now A Broken Business Model Awaiting A New Construct
Dec. 05, 2022 1:20 PM ETThe Walt Disney Company (DIS)NFLX, WBD, PARA, PARAA42 Comments
Summary

Bob Chapek's firing poses one question: why did it take so long for the Disney board to realize he was not the guy to succeed Robert Iger?
Disney may be too big to go forward in the new post pandemic world where all entertainment business models face daunting challenges.
Even at ~$100, The Walt Disney Company stock may be overvalued until Mr. Market begins to believe in changes that may not materialize for years.

It’s kind of a smelly cliché, but with apologies we invoke it here regarding stock dive of The Walt Disney Company (NYSEIS): The fish rots from the head down. No it’s not an aphorism that came from corporate America or the mafia of old. But old it is. The phrase originated from a Turkish philosopher, who in 1273 noted in one of his writings that a fish begins to rot from the head down as indicative of a bad sultanate’s leadership. It has not lost its meaning. Its wisdom as they say, has legs.

The retirement of Robert Iger followed by the appointment of Bob Chapek was not, as many may think, the head of the rotting Disney fish. Those two guys were closer to the gills. The head lies in the comfy, cozy, precincts of the company’s board, insulated by decades of immense success that waned but was then revived by the reigns of Eisner and Katzenberg in the eighties. The board needs fresh blood with strong entertainment chops that sees past the sector crisis.

The board that ultimately emerged post-Eisner was constructed to be safely diverse under Iger. It is an assemblage of notables, picked for who they are, vs. how they can represent shareholders best interests. But apparently not one of them has another Mickey Mouse or Spiderman buzzing around in his or her head.

The hard edge of truth: this is a stock supported near $100 by investors who refuse to believe its business model is broken by events now and those to come in a not-very-brave, shaky, new world just over the horizon. Compare valuations as to what Mr. Market is paying for competitors in streaming, for example. They all face the same headwinds to a greater or lesser extent going forward. None are as multi-faceted as Disney of course. None have the Disney scale. What is telling here is that the money is now bet on the true purist of play in the sector: Netflix (NFLX). And that faces similar secular headwinds as well.

Chart
Data by YCharts

Netflix, Inc.: at $291.50 –a pure play in streaming.

Paramount Global (PARA): at $19.60, a jumble similar to Disney yet to be rationalized and really understood by the market.

Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD): at $11.34, another jumble early in the process of sorting out what it wants to be going forward.

This is not deep-dive analytics for sure, but the valuations appear to be telling us that a pure play in streaming promises the best potential rewards in earnings if and when current headwinds come under control. Disney dwarfs them all on a macro basis, but on a relative value basis, is it a $98 stock? A $150 stock? How much would a slimmed down, cash-rich Disney be worth relative to competitive peers?

Stipulation: Taken as possessors of golden resumes, this Disney board is clearly composed of individuals of intelligence, accomplishment, and good intentions. But what does that mean to kids and parents who aren’t impressed by their lofty CVs or their diversity?

But when you assemble this glittering group of corporate high achievers in a board room to endorse a topmost leadership change for a company, the caution light should begin to blink. Irrelevance is what this once great company faces unless we can see a smart U-turn that reflects reality.

No, it’s not the dream world in which these very accomplished board members apparently live as evidence of greenlighting the hiring of Chapek to begin with. His toss from shiny heir to Iger to a place under the bus speaks volumes about this board’s ability to define the Disney future and address its challenges.

Are they no different than many boards these days? A gathering of golden resume leaders, an impressive, diverse, body of people selected to be representative of population groups. Are they not much more than a PR echo chamber in a friendly media cauldron living in an ESG dreamland? The underlying belief that doing well by “doing good” is a nice, but badly flawed idea seem to permeate many policies.

ESG, for all its well-meaning tropes, is an unproven policy initiative by corporations. It’s mostly talk, tough to implement, even harder to measure. Disney is drenched in it, as are many corporations today that are led by the nose by the pied pipers of fancy NGO’s or pressure groups. Chapek’s tussle with Florida and a few woke policies was part of his undoing.

Is the Disney board now exposed as just another body of rubber stampers of decisions by their politically deft operatives who populate the c-suite? That reality to a degree is the palpable ignition that has fired the fortune of Carl Icahn: like a heat-seeking missile, he has always laser-beamed the corporate landscape for boards like this or their hench-people. Chapek was pushed by Iger to a board that should have demanded someone new.

Pre-pandemic, pre-streaming assault, the sector was a different world. And the Disney business model worked. That world is now broken, and the guys at the helm of the old world are not the guys to steer it through the choppy new waters.

That’s where the head of the fish begins to stink. And if Disney is to endure past the current sector crisis, it needs more than a golden resume board to defend and thrive through the mess. It was this board who greenlit Chapek to succeed Iger. It was this board that worshiped Iger during many years of his reign—but then business was good, so who cared?

What is at work here today at the board level, and what has been a prevailing sense of invulnerability built up over decades of outstanding corporate success, is complacency. Hide behind diversity, shelter under the welcome arms of mediocracy. It seems like a current disease run rampant in the sector. Overpay for content, overstuff bureaucracy, reach for conventional wisdom solutions often that have little chance to succeed.

So, we have this board of presumably capable leaders acting as if they are protective of some set of international standards of civic virtue, not what is best for investors as the challenges pile up and the do-do gets deeper in a sector under fire by bored consumers.
Consider the gallery of Disney board member career backgrounds

Investment banking, money management, Nike and Lululuemon, Oracle, Obama lawyer, CVS/Target finance, Cisco, Biotech, etc. You get the picture. Amazing that with all these tech business geniuses on the board, Disney still hasn’t figured out how to make real money consistently in the digital world without spending itself into colossal debt.

Where are the Pixar guys on the board? Yes, their track record lately hasn’t been perfect, but it’s still ranks as a huge producer of winners over time. Periodic dogs are part of the output of any maker of blockbusters over time, especially when social justice delusions infiltrate the creative process, as it has with Disney. Preachiness infiltrated into Disney films and tv shows is probably not what viewers tune in for even in these days.

The Disney tent poles in superheroes, legacy Walt characters, movies, and library were the creation of young cartoonists in the boroughs of New York working for $20 a page 80 years ago. Walt and his top people built money-makers from mice, ducks, dogs, and fairy tales, reimagined and gave them life in theme parks.

But those foundational bricks began to be chipped away by time by the seventies. So, back in the day, Roy Disney reached for the dynamic duo without capes, ABC’s Eisner and Katzenberg, who not only saved Disney, but planted the seeds for an even greater Disney to come. They were to-the-gut, entertainment guys. That’s to a great degree why The Lion King and Toy Story happened and why it remains a tent pole till this day. They handed off to Iger, who built by acquisition.

Its certain the Disney board is given tons of analytics to mull over at presentations. Yet they stand embarrassed to first choose and then gush over Chapek, and before the ink is really dry on his contract, approve his journey under the bus.

The WSJ reports that Iger had been stirring the Disney pot like even after Chapek arrived, implying that the company’s choice of successor was a colossal flop.

No better choice out there? Iger was a good steward, who served during a happy prosperity—not much more. He’s an improvement, not a solution now. Best to him, but we’re not counting the shiny new nickels yet. His own record was mixed to be truthful, but on balance a plus. He had a huge wallet to surf the buffet of available acquisitions.

His much lauded tenure had ups and downs mostly hidden beneath the macro good times rolling for all. Most of all, the massive debt rolled up during his reign that still eludes solution. It is a legacy not easily borne by whomever ultimately succeeds his second time around trip. Example: he bought Pixar, great move, but where is a single Pixar creative brain sitting on the board? Are they stalling out? Do they need leadership from above? Very pesky, these geniuses. Apparently there was no room at the inn for anyone who has actually created anything.

More at link below

LINK

Disney braces for a layoff bloodbath with more than 4,000 people set to be fired by Friday

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne...et-fired-Friday.html

The Walt Disney Co. will be laying off several thousand employees this week, a second round of cuts that's part of a previously announced plan to eliminate 7,000 jobs this year.

The latest employee releases will take place Monday through Thursday, according to Disney officials. The company will have reached approximately 4,000 job cuts when factoring in both the first and second rounds of layoffs.

The job eliminations are taking place across various business segments, including entertainment, ESPN, parks, experiences and products.

More at link.

Link

Disney sues Gov. Ron DeSantis, alleging political retaliation Story by Aaron Gregg, Lori Rozsa • 1h ago

Walt Disney Co. is suing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over what it calls a “relentless campaign to weaponize government power” — a major escalation of the year-long clash between the entertainment giant and conservative governor.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida came the same day the governor’s handpicked board declared a Disney-friendly deal null and void. Disney and DeSantis’s office have been tussling privately for the past year, but the frequency and intensity of their sparring has intensified dramatically in recent days.

The standoff, which could have major political and economic consequences, began in early 2022 when Disney leaders criticized a controversial education bill advanced by DeSantis and other Florida Republicans. Disney’s resorts in Florida are some of the state’s prime attractions, but DeSantis expressed outrage that the company dare criticize the education bill and he began attacking the company, saying it had received preferential treatment for too long.

The governor, whom many consider a top presidential contender, has repeatedly turned to the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to help him rein in Disney. The first effort came in a special session in April 2022, when lawmakers dissolved the special taxing district created in 1967 to help the company develop and control its vast property near Orlando.

But that move quickly caused concerns about what would happen with Disney’s tax and debt burden. Local government officials called it “a $1 billion debt bomb” and said they could have been forced to raise taxes on property owners to pay for what Disney’s district used to fund, such as roads and other services.

DeSantis ordered another special session in February to address that issue by keeping the tax district, but replacing the board selected by Disney — called the Reedy Creek Improvement District — with a new panel. DeSantis chose the five new board members and called the agency the Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board. When the new board held its first meeting in March, members said they discovered that the outgoing Disney board had handed over most of their power to Disney. That’s what they voted to overturn on Wednesday.

In its legal complaint, Disney accused DeSantis of punishing it for protected speech, threatening its business operations, jeopardizing its economic future in the region, and violating its constitutional rights.

“Having exhausted efforts to seek a resolution, the Company is left with no choice but to file this lawsuit to protect its cast members, guests, and local development partners from a relentless campaign to weaponize government power against Disney in retaliation for expressing a political viewpoint unpopular with certain State officials.”