The Disney Thread | Iger will be with us until 2026

[PlatnumRoyce]

eh, this rolled post over to a new page. Let's focus on something more interesting.

Edited March 28 by PlatnumRoyce

[dudalb]

People are missing how big a deal The First Omen is Disney. It is really pushsing the film with getting over 3'000 screens for it.

No doubt, Disney is announcing it is back in the R and hard PG film market, and will make movies not suitible for family viewing. and will relase them under the 20th Century or other labels to keep the Disney label family friendly. Same thing it did in the 80's and 90's using the Touchstone,  Hollywood and Miramax labels.. Iger has sort of reversed himself here, since it was he who in the early 2000's got Disney out of the "made for adults" movie business.

Edited March 28 by dudalb

[SpiderByte]

Id expect one big announcement in the next week, as a last minute push

[cannastop]

I actually saw an ad about the shareholder election on Dailymotion. That video site. Dunno why Disney thinks the shareholders need to be reached like that, on an individual level

[Morieris]

I have seen them on

- Spotify

- YouTube

- Matthew Belloni's The Town podcast where he is actually saying the words. I don't recall if he's actually saying "vote for the white group" or whatever, but it's still weird that an ad is a real person saying "BOB IGER NEEDS YOUR HELP!''

 

Where I have not seen any, as a stockholder:

- An actual email by the board.

[thajdikt]

Haven’t really been updated in all this but what is the general consensus about the vote? Is it 50/50 or is someone favorable?

[ZeroHour]

1 hour ago, thajdikt said:

Haven’t really been updated in all this but what is the general consensus about the vote? Is it 50/50 or is someone favorable?

No one really knows at this point beyond trying to read the tea leaves around certain people and groups announcing support for one side or the other. We’ll all find out on Wednesday!

[keysersoze123]

I would be shocked if Peltz gets a seat. No one with ounce of intelligence would vote for that guy.

[jking123]

37 minutes ago, keysersoze123 said:

I would be shocked if Peltz gets a seat. No one with ounce of intelligence would vote for that guy.

Didn't some key groups endorse him already?

[Porthos]

40 minutes ago, keysersoze123 said:

I would be shocked if Peltz gets a seat. No one with ounce of intelligence would vote for that guy.

 

Oh, I see you noted as well that CalPERS backed Peltz.

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

 

 

====

 

Jokes about CalPERS fiscal intelligence aside, the very fact that some of the CalPERS of the financial world are lining up behind Peltz should give folks pause about how much of a slam dunk this is gonna be.

 

Might be close, might not.  But I do think the Trades are right when they note that right now it looks closer than it did even a couple of weeks ago.

 

[ZeroHour]

12 minutes ago, jking123 said:

Didn't some key groups endorse him already?

Yes, a couple firms, including ISS, recommended that shareholders vote for Peltz. A couple days ago, the California pension fund said they were voting for Peltz and Rasulo with their 6.5 million shares. 

Edited March 31 by ZeroHour
Porthos beat me to it.

[Porthos]

1 minute ago, ZeroHour said:

Yes, a couple firms, including ISS, recommended that shareholders vote for Peltz. A couple days ago, the California pension fund said they were voting for Peltz and Rasulo with their 6.5 million shares. 

 

"Porthos beat me to it."

 

 

[HowSway]

Why is there even a board seat battle when the stock is up 36% ytd? Might not like Iger, but he has done well by the shareholders

[SpiderByte]

32 minutes ago, ZeroHour said:

Yes, a couple firms, including ISS, recommended that shareholders vote for Peltz. A couple days ago, the California pension fund said they were voting for Peltz and Rasulo with their 6.5 million shares. 

Though just to note Disney has issued over 1.5 billion shares of stock

[Porthos]

28 minutes ago, HowSway said:

Why is there even a board seat battle when the stock is up 36% ytd? Might not like Iger, but he has done well by the shareholders

 

Because people are pissed the fuck off about 2023.

 

That's really it.

 

Sure some are pointing to the lack of a succession plan for Iger (this was CalPERS's fig leaf, ftr).  But in the end, they have memories about how dominant Disney was in 2019 and are upset that Disney isn't in a similar place right now.

 

Year-to-year gains don't matter as much when one is competing with all time highs of the somewhat recent past.

 

something something Knock Off The Subtext Porthos something something

[WorkingonaName]

7 hours ago, Morieris said:

but it's still weird that an ad is a real person saying "BOB IGER NEEDS YOUR HELP!''

 

Bob Iger just needs the numbers on your mum's credit card.

[SpiderByte]

My guess for the big last second push: some kind of numbers about how the Hulu integration into Disney+ has gone.

[PlatnumRoyce]

20 hours ago, HowSway said:

Why is there even a board seat battle when the stock is up 36% ytd? Might not like Iger, but he has done well by the shareholders

 

Iger's also pretty directly causally connected to the good and the bad of 2020/2021 and 2022/2023 and it seems pretty undeniable some of these actions have been taken in light of this activist investor pressure. What happens in a vacuum? That's not a rhetorical question. I'd love to figure out if anyone has a good read on that question. 

[ZeroHour]

28 minutes ago, PlatnumRoyce said:

 

Iger's also pretty directly causally connected to the good and the bad of 2020/2021 and 2022/2023 and it seems pretty undeniable some of these actions have been taken in light of this activist investor pressure. What happens in a vacuum? That's not a rhetorical question. I'd love to figure out if anyone has a good read on that question. 

Well none of it's simple and I think it would be quite impossible to disentangle it in any way that could satisfactorily answer your question. Part of that is because we know from after the fact reporting that Peltz and other activist investors putting pressure on the board and Chapek was part of the calculus for the board to break the emergency glass and bring back Iger to begin with. Would Chapek still have kept his job for awhile longer after his now infamous earnings call if the board didn't have concerns about a shareholder revolt? Impossible to say.  

 

We also know that Chapek made big moves to reorganize the company in order to separate the financials from the creative that Iger hated. On his way out the door, Iger made a final speech to the company about how Disney had to be driven by creativity to be successful. Chapek followed after him and basically said no actually we are an entirely number driven company now and all of our decision making is based purely on data. Chapek followed a lot of Iger's big IP playbook but was even more aggressive about pumping out more at a faster rate. How different would the 2022/2023 slates have looked if Iger stayed on through the pandemic? No way to know really.

 

The things that we do know are that Disney+ was going to get hit by the Netflix correction no matter what because every streaming service has been. Assuming that the board would've brought back Iger no matter what, we can also fairly say a lot of his moves like layoffs, removing streaming programming, switching streaming movies to theatrical, and raising prices on streaming were all going to happen because it's what every streaming service has done. Beyond that it becomes very difficult to guess. I'd assume they'd still bring back their dividend because there was only so long they could get away without it. Major reinvestments back into the parks was always going to be necessary because of Epic Universe. Comcast and Disney already had an agreement about turning over Hulu. Maybe all of this would've been slower without activist pressure? Could be, but Iger's mission would've been to get the stock price back up regardless.

 

There are so many unknowns that speculation can very quickly devolve into corporate fan fiction.

[SpiderByte]

My general gist of it is Peltz has gotten some good PR with endorsements but it's not likely enough to convince enough people to go against Iger