After Disney’s (NYSE:DIS) sports network ESPN renewed its deal with the National Football League (NFL), it struck another deal with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to acquire international broadcasting rights for Men’s basketball. For Disney, ESPN is a significant business as the company charges a high fee per subscriber in addition to ad sales. Disney is able to do so as ESPN’s lead in sports programming is unparalleled. The new deal is another step to reinforce that leadership, although in terms of standalone financial value, it does not move the needle much for Disney. Disney competes with other media conglomerates such as News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS), CBS (NYSE:CBS) and Time Warner (NYSE:TWX).
Articles for Disney
ESPN’s NCAA Hoops Broadcasting Rights Chip in for Disney’s $46 Stock Value
Graph ItNEW!Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012 by Trefis Team
ESPN’s Monday Night Football Ratings Drop, Should Disney Be Worried?
Graph ItNEW!Tuesday, December 27th, 2011 by Trefis Team
As Disney’s (NYSE:DIS) ESPN renews its deal with the National Football League for a 73% higher fee, in-line with deals made by CBS (NYSE:CBS), News Corp’s (NASDAQ:NWS) Fox and Comcast’s (NASDAQ:CMCSA) NBC, the channel is witnessing a decline in ratings for the NFL on Monday nights. This is ironic as ESPN will be paying a lot more for a potentially lower viewership, which would affect its advertising revenues. Below we take a look at the potential impact on Disney from lower ESPN ratings.
Rising Sports Programming Costs Hits the Customer’s Pocket Book
Graph ItNEW!Monday, December 12th, 2011 by Trefis Team
One of the concerns for pay-TV service providers such as Time Warner cable (NYSE:TWC), Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA), Dish Network (NASDAQ:DISH) and others is that the programming costs are rising, especially when it comes to sports channels. Disney’s (NYSE:DIS) ESPN is the primary culprit and has registered fee growth that has significantly outpaced the growth for other networks.
So where is the industry heading with this? Who gains and who loses?
Disney Updates: Increases Dividend, Youtube Gets Movies
Graph ItNEW!Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 by Trefis Team
Disney’s (NYSE:DIS) stock has jumped in the past couple of weeks, primarily as a result of the company’s announcement regarding dividend increase. Disney announced that it will be increasing its annual cash dividend by 50%, up from 40 cents per share to 60 cents per share to be paid in early 2012. Investors have welcomed this move, which has helped support shares in the last week. The parks & resorts business, including these cruises, is what distinguishes Disney from other media conglomerates such as Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) and News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS).
Disney’s Growth in Cable & Online Supports $46 Value
Graph ItNEW!Thursday, November 17th, 2011 by Trefis Team
Disney (NYSE:DIS) has demonstrated its strength despite economic headwinds, and it made some strides in extending partnerships with online distribution platforms. Disney’s stock jumped after the company reported earnings last week as a result of increased profits. While this was in part driven by improvement at theme parts, a significant portion came from its TV networks which continue to remain the main pillar of Disney’s growth. To strengthen its TV earnings, the company has signed deals with Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Youtube.
See our full analysis for Disney
Our price estimate for Disney stands at $46, implying a premium of more than 30% to the market price
Disney Poised for $46: Hangs on to Hulu Stake, Preps for Iger Succession
Graph ItNEW!Monday, October 17th, 2011 by Trefis Team
Disney’s (NYSE:DIS) stock rose last week as the broader market recovered due to investors’ optimism regarding plans to recapitalize euro-zone banks. While any business-specific event didn’t drive the stock, there were several important developments that bode well for the company.
Firstly, the company announced that its current CEO, Robert Iger, will step down from his duty in 2015. To investors, this demonstrates that the company is planning for the long-term and that’s a good thing.
Furthermore, Disney and other owners of Hulu announced that they will terminate the sale of the online streaming service, which attracted bidders like Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Dish Network (NASDAQ:DISH). Perhaps Disney and others reconsidered after seeing Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) stumble so dramatically recently, which makes it look vulnerable.
In other developments, Disney bought additional stake in an Indian gaming company, Indiagames and is planning to revive the production of its big-budget movie, The Lone Ranger.
We believe that these announcements show Disney’s long-term planning, and given these accompanied by its well established and stable businesses, the company is well positioned and should see further upside in the coming quarters.
Disney Bets $400 Million that Avatar Attractions Will Bring in Crowds
Graph ItNEW!Tuesday, September 27th, 2011 by Trefis Team
Last week in its press release, Disney (NYSE:DIS) announced that it will be working with Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment and News Corp’s (NASDAQ:NWS) Fox to create blockbuster Avatar-themed attractions in its theme parks. Avatar was a blockbuster movie that was released in 2009 in 3D and grossed about $2.8 billion worldwide. The box office earnings demonstrate the widespread popularity of this movie and its fictional Navi people from a foreign world, and it makes sense for Disney to incorporate it in its theme parks. It is not the first time that Disney has created attractions based on movies that are not produced by Disney studios, for instance Indian Jones was distributed by Viacom’s (NYSE:VIA) Paramount Pictures.
The project is expected to cost about $400 million. Let’s take a look at how Disney can recoup these costs. We estimate that operating margins (EBITDA) for Disney’s parks and resorts are of the order of 23%, and so this implies that in order to recoup capital expenditures of $400 million, Disney will need to earn incremental revenue of close to $1.75 billion. Let’s assume that Disney will do this over the course of 5 years. This implies that each year it will need to earn incremental $350 million of revenue. Given our estimates of per capita guest spend of little over $100 per year, Disney will need to attract additional 3.5 million customers each year. Can Disney do it? Anything less and Disney will take a longer time to get net returns.
Our price estimate for Disney stands at $46.40, implying a premium of over 50% to the market price.
The Lion King Roars, Highlights Disney’s Upside from 3D Movies
Graph ItNEW!Monday, September 19th, 2011 by Trefis Team
Disney (NYSE:DIS) recently released the 3-D remake of the movie The Lion King, which was first released 17 years ago. What was surprising was that the movie grabbed $29.3 million in domestic box office just on its first weekend! We want to highlight a couple of important aspects here. First, the success of this popular remake where the difference is essentially centered around the introduction of 3D technology, which highlights the importance of 3D movies in driving box office sales for media companies including Disney, Time Warner (NYSE:TWX), News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS) and Viacom (NYSE:VIA). The 3D technology manifests itself not only in form of drawing a crowd but also higher ticket prices and thus greater profit opportunities.
Second, the movie business contributes almost one-fifth to Disney’s value as per our estimates. This implies that it makes sense to continue to invest in 3D movies. The impact will not only be visible in the box office business, but also percolate down to DVD and licensing sales.
Our price estimate for Disney stands at $46.40, implying a premium of roughly 40% to the market price.
See our complete analysis for Disney’s stock.
Forget Theme Parks, Disney’s a Buy Because of ESPN and its Cable Channels
Graph ItNEW!Tuesday, September 13th, 2011 by Trefis Team
We recently came across an article on Seeking Alpha that talked about how Disney’s (NYSE:DIS) stock is attractive at current market prices. Do we agree with the conclusion? The answer is yes. But our premise differs from what author mentions. Unlike other media companies such as News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS), CBS (NYSE:CBS), Viacom (NYSE:VIA) and Time Warner (NYSELTWX), Disney also maintains large theme parks and resorts. We believe that the author of this article has stressed more on this aspect than what we feel is necessary. Even though the company may be making lot of progress on this front, these aren’t really the businesses that should investors’ should watch.
We estimate that theme parks and resorts business constitute less than 10% to Disney’s stock value.
The reason we believe Disney is attractive because of continued success of its major cable channels like ESPN and Disney Channel. These channels, especially ESPN, command a high premium and provide stable revenue stream due to high dependence on subscription revenues. In fact we estimate that ESPN is almost 30% of Disney’s value
Our price estimate for Disney stands at $46.39, implying a premium of about 50% to the market.
Disney Theme Parks: Lots of Pain, Modest Shareholder Gain
Graph ItNEW!Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 by Trefis Team
Disney (NYSE:DIS) recently fired some of its senior executives who were in charge of its new venture in Hawaii, a mini theme park. The issue centered around executives underestimating costs thereby putting the profitability of the venture in jeopardy.
From a shareholder perspective, Disney is an interesting business — it’s like Six Flags (NYSE:SIX) for kids meets Starwood Hotels & Resorts (NYSE:HOT) with a large side of Viacom (NYSE:VIA). With so many business lines, how much do the theme parks really matter?
Below we highlight the significance of Disney theme parks for the company, challenges faced by the business and the benefits theme park investments may yield in the future.
Disney : All Articles
- Week of 2012-01-01
- Week of 2011-12-25
- Week of 2011-12-11
- Week of 2011-12-04
- Week of 2011-11-13
- Week of 2011-10-16
- Week of 2011-09-25
- Week of 2011-09-18
- Week of 2011-09-11
- Week of 2011-08-21
- Week of 2011-07-17
- Week of 2011-05-22
- 05/27/11 The 4 Top Value Drivers for Disney
- Week of 2011-05-01
- 05/04/11 Will Netflix Enter the UK?
- Week of 2011-04-03
- 04/08/11 Trefis Morning Coffee – Disney, Toyota, Intel, & Polo Ralph Lauren
- 04/07/11 Viacom Pulls Channels from iPad App Raising Stakes in the Streaming Standoff
- Week of 2011-03-27
- 03/31/11 What Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2 Means to Time Warner
- 03/29/11 Why CBS Pulled Content from Netflix
- Week of 2011-03-13
- Week of 2011-03-06
- 03/09/11 Nickelodeon Monkeying Around with Online Games, Stock Upside is Limited
- 03/07/11 CBS Acquires Clicker to Expand Digital Business and Tap Internet TV’s Growth
- Week of 2011-02-20
- Week of 2011-02-13
- Week of 2011-02-06
- Week of 2011-01-30
- Week of 2011-01-23
- 01/27/11 Are Social Networks Stepping on Media Conglomerates’ Turf?
- 01/25/11 Impact of Avatar Sequels on News Corp Stock
- Week of 2011-01-16
- 01/18/11 Disney Could Spark Recovery in Box Office Market Share with Pirates of the Caribbean Releases
- 01/18/11 Could Comcast-NBC End Up Like Time Warner?
- Week of 2011-01-09
- 01/14/11 Comcast-NBC Deal, What is Comcast’s End Game?
- 01/11/11 $1 Billion MySpace Valuation Highlights Facebook’s Dominance, But News Corp Stock Still Cheap
- Week of 2011-01-02
- 01/06/11 Impact on CBS if Pandora Becomes the Biggest Threat to Radio
- 01/05/11 TV Everywhere – Time Warner Cable’s Solution to Cord Cutting?
- 01/02/11 Dissecting Disney’s Spend by Product Line
- Week of 2010-12-26
- 12/31/10 News Corp’s BSkyB Deal to Grow Satellite Operations, Small Impact on Stock
- 12/30/10 NFL Fuels Disney’s ESPN Engine
- 12/28/10 Google TV Could Threaten Key Revenue Streams for Broadcast Networks
- Week of 2010-12-19
- 12/23/10 WSJ Holds its Ground, Positions News Corp for Growth
- 12/20/10 Cable and Broadcast Networks Looking More Alike
- Week of 2010-12-12
- 12/15/10 Upside to CBS from Viewership Strength
- 12/14/10 How Much Can Disney Gain from Netflix Deal?
- Week of 2010-12-05
- 12/10/10 HBO, MTV, ESPN, TNT, Nickelodeon – Which TV Channel is the Most Valuable?
- 12/08/10 Impact of 2 Disney Movies Hitting $1 Billion in 2010
- 12/07/10 Costs for Disney’s Shanghai Park a Concern
- Week of 2010-11-28
- 12/03/10 CBS Network Gains From Better Ad Sales Pricing
- 12/01/10 CBS Publishing Unit: E-Books Are The Future
- Week of 2010-11-14
- 11/19/10 DirecTV’s Subscriber Gains Continue
- 11/17/10 iPhone’s Standalone Business Worth More Than All But 8 Companies in the World
- Week of 2010-11-07
- 11/10/10 Disney Gains From ESPN Video and Digital Deals
- 11/09/10 Dish Network’s HD Pricing to Drop Further?
- Week of 2010-10-24
- Week of 2010-09-19
- Week of 2010-09-05
- Week of 2010-08-29
- Week of 2010-08-22
- 08/23/10 Slower Growth Expected for Disney Consumer Products Revenues
- 08/23/10 Disney Needs 30% Annual Revenue Growth from Playdom
- Week of 2010-08-15
- Week of 2010-08-08
- Week of 2010-08-01
- Week of 2010-07-25
- 07/27/10 ESPN Crucial for Disney’s Success
- Week of 2010-07-11
- Week of 2010-06-20
- Week of 2010-05-09
- Week of 2010-05-02
- Week of 2010-04-25
- Week of 2010-04-18
- Week of 2010-04-11
- 04/16/10 People Magazine Worth 5% of Time Warner’s Stock, 2x More than TIME Magazine
- 04/15/10 CBS Could See 8% Stock Upside If Radio Ad Market Improves in 2010
- 04/14/10 Time Warner’s Stock Depends on Modest Subscriber Fee Growth for TNT Channel
- 04/12/10 Disney’s CapEx Rivals that of Time Warner, News Corp and Viacom Combined
- Week of 2010-04-04
- 04/09/10 Wall Street Journal is About 5% of News Corp’s Stock
- 04/08/10 US Box Office Ticket Price Hikes Hardly Matter to Viacom’s Stock
- 04/05/10 The Disney Channel is Nearly 7% of Disney’s Stock
- Week of 2010-03-14
- Week of 2010-03-07
- Week of 2010-02-28
- 03/04/10 Disney Characters Drive $8 billion Disney Consumer Merchandise Business
- 03/01/10 Increased political ad spend benefits CBS; upside to stock is small
- Week of 2010-02-21
- Week of 2010-02-14
- 02/19/10 Expansion of Disney’s Parks & Resorts Will Attract More Guests and Drive Revenue
- 02/17/10 Featured Forecast: CBS TV Network Ad Pricing Declines Expected
- Week of 2010-01-31
- 02/02/10 Disney May Raise Costs for Netflix
- Week of 2010-01-24
- 01/28/10 Disney: Reasons for Excitement
- Week of 2010-01-17
- 01/18/10 Showtime Networks is crucial for CBS
- Week of 2009-12-27
- Week of 2009-12-20
- Week of 2009-12-06
- Week of 2009-11-22
- Week of 2009-11-15
- Week of 2009-09-20
- 09/22/09 Does the Box Office matter?
- Week of 2009-08-16
- 08/19/09 Disney parks and resorts business makes Disney’s stock more resilient than other media stocks
- Week of 2009-08-09
- Week of 2009-07-19