From early 2000, you made a lot more money if you bought a 20 year CD (if that even exists). Even including till now, it’s way underperformed the S&P since early 2020 if you reinvested dividends, which you would if you set and forget.
We just went through the glory years of Marvel and Star Wars sequels. Black Widow and Eternals will be interesting if they can keep it going at the same level. Disney+ has been out for 2 years now.
The returns really don’t say set it and forget it IMHO and I have Hulu Live and Disney+. No one watches Disney+ until a new series is on. I think that’s what may be a problem. Netflix is worth it because they add new stuff all the time and there’s a ton of stuff from other countries like Squid Game that people can watch. Disney+ needs to invest in a ton more new content to stay worth the price.
Don’t mean to be harsh on it. If you like it and think it will outperform no worries. I’m not sold that it will suddenly grow like crazy.
A big part of the Disney thesis was that the pandemic was winding down and when the core businesses returned to normal you were essentially getting a free top 5 streaming business on top, based on the discount of the core business.
Of course as we now know the pandemic has lingered a lot longer than was anticipated and the core business is still facing headwinds from it. The parks are open again but international travel is still banned in many places or only just opened. Covid restrictions are still much tighter in many of Disney's non-American markets as well.
Movies and cruises are similarly affected.
The dividend suspension is pandemic related and, while extended, is still assumed to be temporary. This is very much a pandemic stock whose core business was every bit as impacted by the pandemic as boeing or the airlines but has performed much better.
I still think it was a fair recommendation every time it was recommended in here at $100, then $120, then $130 as a safe low downside option that still had upside. The pandemic lingering was a worst case scenario and it has still has netted most a solid gain from there. Obviously the market ran like crazy but had the market tanked it would likely still be holding up while all those growth stocks were blowing up people's accounts. Pandemic lingering and market blowing up were a worst case scenario but the only cost has been opportunity cost.
What they've done since 2000 doesn't mean a ton to me since none of the talk about it was in 2000 and this thread didn't even exist then. The DIS discussion in here was all 2020-onwards.
It's the same percentage off the March 2020 lows as Amazon despite its core business being something that was hurt by the pandemic while Amazon's core business (and really all of their businesses) was something that was helped by it. AAPL has outpaced it a bit up 240% since the pandemic lows while DIS is up 190%. At its peak a few weeks ago DIS was up 230%.
And that's in spite of the fact that the government never said "it is illegal to order stuff online" or "it is illegal to use a mobile phone" like they did with theme parks, cruises, and movies.
I still think there is plenty of meat on the bone for when things eventually fully get back to normal, which has taken longer than expected. But a safe staple stock that has shown it can survive literally anything including the government temporarily making 90% of its businesses illegal while still having a new growth component to it when the core business returns is a lot less attractive in a market where every growth stock has ballooned. Those have and did have a lot less downside protection though.
Another way to look at it is what would Amazon's growth looked like if its AWS success had come at the same time as online retail being shut down entirely? In a lot of ways those losses would have masked the AWS gains even though a slight gain in stock prices from AWS would have implied a much larger growth for the overall company when online retail returned. That's kind of where Disney is with the D+ growth alongside the core business being damaged. That core business damage has just extended longer than anticipated, but as of a week ago the stock was still up 35% from where it was originally discussed (obviously down a bit from that now). AMZN is up 11% over that same span.
Not trying to shill. Most Dow companies have been pretty boring the last year relative to growth. It's done a bit better than most of those despite unexpected headwinds after the pandemic seemed to be winding down.