Disney (DIS) Isn’t Going to Figure This Out, but There Is Another Stock That Will

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By Austin Smith Updated Published

Key Points

  • Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) raised its yield to 1%, but this is low relative to rivals and does not overcome more general underperformance.

  • Divisions like streaming and media remain uncertain, while the company’s reliance on theme parks for operating income has major risks.

  • With a higher dividend yield (~3.5%) and diverse revenue sources, Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) offers maybe a better option in the entertainment and media sector.

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Disney (DIS) Isn’t Going to Figure This Out, but There Is Another Stock That Will

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Transcript:

[00:00:00] Douglas McIntyre: The Walt Disney Company just said that they will raise their dividend, by a dollar. They’re gonna pay 50 cents in January, cents in July.

[00:00:09] Lee Jackson: It’s up to a dollar. Right, right.

[00:00:12] Douglas McIntyre: Right. So to a dollar, but it, means I think that the yield on Disney goes up to about 1%.

[00:00:21] Lee Jackson: Yeah. And it’s a, it’s a pretty good increase. It’s a, you know, 33 percent jump for a, for a dividend. That’s, that’s a huge increase.

[00:00:31] Douglas McIntyre: Yeah. But it’s only two. it’s, it’s a huge increase to 1%. What I’m saying is

[00:00:37] Douglas McIntyre: from two thirds of a percent to 1%, the yield is still remarkably small. Now, Disney’s stock has been up recently. go back over the course of a year or two, it’s still been smoked. It’s still underperformed the market by.

[00:00:51] Lee Jackson: Right.

[00:00:52] Douglas McIntyre: amount. The question you have to ask yourself on Disney is you’re getting a bigger yield. But theme parks, theme parks, theme parks, okay? Streaming lost billions of dollars. It’s now slightly profitable. it appears it could stay there. It’s not one of the big guys. I call the big guys Amazon Prime Video (NASDAQ: AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) and Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), they’re in that next tier though. And if that next tier does pretty well, it’s a nice business. The studio business they’ve got is a hit or miss business. Okay.

[00:01:25] Lee Jackson: It is. And it’s expensive.

[00:01:28] Douglas McIntyre: you can make a lot of money. You can lose a lot of money. Media, ABC, ESPN, good businesses, but basically ad advertising base, which means over time, they’re not good businesses.

[00:01:44] Lee Jackson: No,

[00:01:45] Douglas McIntyre: the

[00:01:47] Lee Jackson: is a bit dead. Yeah.

[00:01:49] Douglas McIntyre: driver of operating income at the Walt Disney company is what’s called experiences and experiences is primarily theme parks, two in the United States. got one in Paris, one in Shanghai.

[00:02:04] Lee Jackson: Yep.

[00:02:04] Douglas McIntyre: about the theme parks, if they’re too expensive, CNBC did an analysis and they said now person, The typical Disney daily ticket is 165, right?

[00:02:20] Lee Jackson: That’s a lot.

[00:02:21] Douglas McIntyre: you’ve got a family of four, you’re going to Disney. First, you gotta pay to get there, okay? ticket, drive, whatever it is.

[00:02:29] Lee Jackson: Yep. Got to get a hotel room.

[00:02:31] Douglas McIntyre: Gotta stay someplace, you’re gonna lose a lot of weight, you gotta food, and then you’ve gotta pay what? I mean, look, you’re a family of four, it’s a very expensive vacation.

[00:02:46] Douglas McIntyre: So the

[00:02:46] Lee Jackson: It is.

[00:02:48] Douglas McIntyre: That a lot of Disney investors have is that operating income at the at the experiences theme parks starts to drop because people simply can’t afford to go. So if I’m watching the earnings at Disney, the fourth quarter numbers come out, the first thing I’m going to ask myself is what happened to operating income as at experiences. If it isn’t good, the stock is going to start to slide again.

[00:03:16] Lee Jackson: Yeah. And the thing that’s interesting is that from the theme park business, there’s always it’s it’s not like there’s not competition. If you can’t afford going to a Disney, you know, the bang the huge one. you can go to Six Flags over Texas, or you can go to Cedar Point in Ohio, or you can go to one of the secondary parks at the Magic Mountain out in California, if you can’t afford Disneyland.

[00:03:44] Lee Jackson: And those can take a lot of that business because they can be a little more flexible on charging the consumer, because they don’t have the overhead. So that’s also a concern.

[00:03:57] Douglas McIntyre: So Disney buy or sell. mean, it’s, it’s moving up some. The reason I, I would be, I’m anxious about what happens with experiences. So to me, I wouldn’t touch the stock now because that business was a little weak in Q3.

[00:04:20] Lee Jackson: Yeah, and actually if you’re looking, you know, if you’re one of our viewers or 24/7 wall street readers if you’re looking for a stock like that to own look at comcast for goodness sakes I mean, they’re at least smart in their business and they pay a much better yield I think the Comcast dividends three and a half percent something along those lines and they have theme parks They have legacy TV, although they’re smart, they’re going to jettison all their crappy cable, the MSNBC, CNBC, all the, all the crappy cable that doesn’t get any viewership.

[00:04:57] Lee Jackson: We’re going to spin it off, you know, because they just, they just don’t want that under their big corporate umbrella anymore. So really, I, you know, if you want a good Paris trade, you could be long the Comcast, which is simple CMCSA and short Disney, which is DIS. Or if you don’t want to do that. Just buy Comcast instead because it’s, you know, it’s likely a better buy and they have tangible business in addition to entertainment, you know, they have their, my internet back here is, is, is, you know, their, their, infinity, product and it’s very good.

[00:05:30] Lee Jackson: And so I think Comcast would be a better pick for any of our viewers.

Photo of Austin Smith
About the Author Austin Smith →

Austin Smith is a financial publisher with over two decades of experience in the markets. He spent over a decade at The Motley Fool as a senior editor for Fool.com, portfolio advisor for Millionacres, and launched new brands in the personal finance and real estate investing space.

His work has been featured on Fool.com, NPR, CNBC, USA Today, Yahoo Finance, MSN, AOL, Marketwatch, and many other publications. Today he writes for 24/7 Wall St and covers equities, REITs, and ETFs for readers. He is as an advisor to private companies, and co-hosts The AI Investor Podcast.

When not looking for investment opportunities, he can be found skiing, running, or playing soccer with his children. Learn more about me here.

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