Will Bob Iger decide to sell Disney?

quote:

---

Bob Iger built Disney into the world’s most powerful entertainment company by acquiring Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm. Now he’s looking to downsize.

Iger put roughly a third of the company up for sale this week, declaring Disney’s linear TV assets noncore. That includes TV networks ABC, FX and Freeform. He also said Disney is looking for a strategic partner for ESPN — though he’s not willing to sell the whole thing — and the company is already looking to sell or restructure its TV and streaming business in India.

It’s a stunning if inevitable turn of events for an executive who spent so much of his career working in TV, and for a company that relied on cable networks for the majority of its profit. Before the pandemic, Disney’s media networks generated 35%, or $24.8 billion, of company revenue and more than 50%, or $7.5 billion, of its operating income.

Yet the accelerating decline of cable TV has limited Iger’s options. He thought he’d solved this problem with Disney+ and Hulu, his two mass-market streaming services. But his streaming business is expected to register a loss of about $800 million in the company’s just-ended third quarter.

---

quote:

---

It’s not yet clear how serious Iger is about selling entire TV networks. ABC, for example, is key to retaining NBA rights. FX has been a key supplier of programming to Hulu, which Iger plans to keep and fold into Disney+.

Yet Iger’s CNBC interview was unmistakably a distress signal. Disney is contractually obligated to buy Comcast Corp.’s one-third stake in Hulu in a deal that would value the business at least at $27.5 billion. It’s also wrestling with a colossal debt pile stemming from its $71.3 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox in 2019.

A sale of the TV business could fetch around $8 billion, according to Wells Fargo analyst Steve Cahall — which would largely offset the cost of acquiring the piece of Hulu it doesn't yet own. Most of the potential suitors for linear TV networks are financial entities, like private equity firms, that would milk them for cash as they decline into obscurity.

The list of interested parties in ESPN is longer, and could include tech giants like Apple, as well as sports companies like Fanatics. The streaming side of the sports giant, ESPN+, remains more of a niche business. But Disney continues to signal it will offer all of ESPN outside of the cable bundle in the near future.

---

quote:

---

After receiving a two-year contract extension this past week, Iger has three more years to clean up a big mess that also includes a slowdown in the company’s theme-park business, a series of misses for the company’s film division and the strike by Hollywood actors and writers against all of the media companies.

Rumors have long swirled that Iger will end up selling all of Disney to Apple. It’s still hard to imagine Iger selling Disney to anyone. He was always a builder — not a seller. But Bob the builder is doing a lot more cutting this time around.

---