He may have given up the proxy fight, but Nelson Peltz clearly got most of what he wanted out of The Walt Disney Co.
Disney’s direct-to-consumer services — that is, streaming — are trending in the right direction. A new reorganization of L.A. County’s biggest company presumably sets up Disney’s myriad operations to be more successful. To help achieve billions in reduced expenses, thousands of jobs will be eliminated this year. The shareholder dividend is probably coming back.
Peltz, who was staging a proxy fight to improve Disney’s operations and profitability, gave up last week, saying his objections had been heard and acted on by Disney’s board.
“Now it’s about execution and ensuring best in class corporate governance going forward,” Peltz’s investment firm, Trian Partners, said in a statement.
Who won?
Peltz, an 80-year-old billionaire, is publicly feeling vindicated for his weekslong effort to be a thorn in Disney’s side. At the same time, Disney’s final salvo in the fight, via CEO Bob Iger’s quarterly earnings conference call last week, backed up the board’s assertion that they didn’t need Peltz at the table.
As far as who won, “I think it’s a lot of both,” said Sahak Manuelian, managing director and head of equity trading for Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles. “Bob Iger can certainly pound his chest and say, ‘Yeah, I’ve got this.’ On the flip side, Peltz is like, ‘I just made a lot of money, very quickly, and I was right, see? This guy’s going to do a lot of stuff I wanted to.’ I think they both came out looking good, to be honest. It’s a win-win.”
Thanks to a better-than-expected first quarter, Peltz’s 9.4 million shares in Disney — around one-half of 1% of the company — are valued at more than $1 billion, a growth of more than $237 million from when he bought them in November.
According the earnings report release last week, sales increased 8% to $23.5 billion, and the company posted a profit…
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