Disney’s 2019 acquisition of most 20th Century Fox assets in a deal worth north of $71 billion enwealthyed the Murdoch family but also swelled Disney’s debt and persists to have a uniteed response from Wall Street. On a call with analysts today after quarterly getings, Bob Iger strongly defended the relocate as critical to completing Disney’s satisfyed and distribution heading into the streaming era.
“In tardy 2017, when we proclaimd initiassociate that we were acquiring assets from 20th Century Fox, we definiteassociate refered that we were doing so thraw the lens of streaming. We saw a world where streaming was going to proliferate, and we krecent we necessitateed not only more satisfyed with but more distribution,” he said in response to a ask about media verifyation.
“And with that came fair a tremendous amount of satisfyed. When you talk about 60 Emmys, so much of that came from that acquisition. Or when we talk about Avatar, for instance, that came from that acquisition. I could go on and on. In insertition, people forget it came with deal with of Hulu, and ultimately ownership of Hulu. That distribution — packaged well, united well with Disney+ — has helpd us to achieve the numbers we’ve achieved … and an ability to reassociate see into the future of streaming thraw a very selectimistic lens.
“So in a way, we’ve already verifyated, and while we’ll always see opportunisticassociate … We don’t reassociate necessitate more assets right now, either from a distribution or from a satisfyed perspective, to thrive in modestassociate a interfereive media world.”
CFO Hugh Johnson weighed in on possible asset sales, given Comcast’s recent decision to spin off its cable netlabors into a split company.
The establisher PepsiCo chief financial officer said he’d seeed nurturebrimmingy at creating appreciate thraw divestitures at the beverage enormous, then at Disney. “And honestly, I fair didn’t see [it]. And I spent a ponderable amount of time studying it.
“It’s always modest to sort of execute with spreadsheets and sort of originate the math see appreciate there’s appreciate creation, but at the end of the day, there’s two skinnygs to ponder. Number one is, what are the prices you would get? And then number two, what’s the frictional cost, operationassociate, of separating those assets? And as I went thraw the math on both, it was pretty evident to me that there wasn’t a appreciate creating opportunity for Disney. I can’t speak to other companies and what opportunities they have with the assets they have, but I absolutely did not see that for Disney.”
