The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) has been one of the best performing Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks year to date in 2015. Disney shares were last seen up 17% so far in 2015 – and that is after a 25% gain in 2014. When 24/7 Wall St. ran its Disney Bull-Bear Outlook for 2015, the expected gain was only supposed to be about 4% and much of that was expected to be from the dividend.
What is perplexing to 24/7 Wall St. is that short selling hedge funds are not just shorting Disney. The entertainment and media powerhouse is one of the most shorted stocks at the biggest short-seller hedge funds, according to the Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund Trend Monitor. The numbers behind the short selling hedge fund reporting were not all that much of a standout. Still, these hedge funds are betting against Bob Iger’s massive success, they are betting against key franchises like the Avengers, Frozen, Star Wars, and the remaining myriad of successes that have been seen.
So, what are investors supposed to think here? It turns out that Disney has outperformed Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) since we ran the stocks to hold for the next decade back in late 2010. This list was just updated for the Stocks to Own for the Next Decade (2015 edition). While most of those 2010 picks now have multiple alternatives for investors five years later, our view stands now that Disney quite simply has no real rival that can match its scope even if we did offer some alternatives.
The aim of this exercise is to show both sides of the coin. After all, anyone has to admit that most trends and successes cannot last forever. So, here is what the hedge funds and short sellers betting against Disney are thinking – and what the Disney bulls are thinking.
We now know that a sequel to Frozen is coming. We also have barely a half-year before the coming Star Wars film gets released. That will be the first Star Wars release under Disney, and it is likely to be one of the highest grossing movies of all-time. It may very well be the highest grossing movie of all time.
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The Goldman Sachs report from this last week had some $4.5 billion short as of the end of the first quarter, and the April 30 short interest reading from the New York Stock Exchange data showed that 41.5 million shares were in the total short interest. All in all, those match up — but Disney’s total short interest peaked at almost 47 million shares in late 2014, and the lowest short interest of the last year was 36.5 million shares in May of 2014.
If a short seller was just valuing Disney based upon its metrics as a normal stock, it is easier to understand why Disney is such a large short position by hedge funds. Shares are now around $110.50 or so, against a 52-week range of $78.54 to $113.30. Disney is valued at 22 times expected 2015 earnings, and it is valued at more than 19 times the expected 2016 earnings estimate.
Another issue to consider here is that Disney’s dividend almost encourages short sellers to view it while licking their lips. Disney’s yield is just over 1% due to great share performance, and that makes the yield among the lowest handful of Dow Jones Industrial Average dividend yields. And to add fuel to that fire, Disney only pays its dividend out in the very old-fashioned manner of once a year.
Also, Disney’s market cap of over $187 billion may seem high when you consider its $10.8 billion net tangible assets at the end of March. Still, its total stockholder equity was listed as over $46 billion at the same time.
The one thing that has been hard to argue against here, and which the shorting hedge funds have been feeling endless pain over, is that Disney shares have been the bull market’s go-to Dow stock to own. Sure, there is Apple but Apple has been widely owned by hedge funds for years and it is still a new Dow member. Disney has a lot more growth avenues if you just count major product lines, franchises and destinations.
This is not the first time that the short selling activity has stood out in Walt Disney shares. It just did not seem like Disney would be the second most shorted hedge fund stock — behind AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T).
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