The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 60 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Rosenthal: Taylor Swift Enterprise Value Is $11B Using Disney's 20x Multiple
“Disney trades at 20 X free cash flow. Taylor is five hundred and fifty million in free cash flow. That's a eleven billion dollar enterprise value for Taylor.”
Munger says business forecasting fails when CEOs like Bob Iger prioritize PR
“Well, I think a lot of companies are pretty good, but you can't confidently say what's going to happen because you may get some guy like Iger in that just wants to push everything and do the right public relations. So no matter how good the business is, it'll …”
Ovitz: Michael Eisner undercut me at every opportunity at Disney
“When I got to Disney, it was very clear there was a head-to-head conflict, and Michael undercut me every chance he could, and after a couple years, I just didn't want to deal with it anymore”
Keeping content exclusively on Disney+ severely limits Disney's downstream IP monetization
“So they do have Disney Plus. It does have a hundred and thirty million people subscribed, but a 130 is not 350. And so your content that you want to drive people to the parks and to merch is only reaching 40% of the people that it could if it were on Netflix, …”
Gilbert: Iger Erred by Appointing Chapek for Peacetime
“Ultimately, I kind of think they just chose the wrong guy in Bob Chapek, and I think Iger's mistake in recommending Bob Chapek for the job was thinking that the company was about to enter a peacetime.”
Gilbert: Acquiring Capital Cities/ABC Cost Disney Its Strategic Clarity
“It was because it had ESPN, but it also cost the company It's strategic clarity. Disney never again would get to be just Disney. It's the flywheel business and the ESPN affiliate slash advertising cable business. And it's worth it because buying ESPN was this …”
Parks and cruises now account for almost 60% of Disney's total profits
“Almost 60% of the profits of the entire company come from parks and cruises.”
Marvel's post-2021 theatrical film slate might actually have a negative return
“And if you do flash forward, the post 2021 movie slate might actually be negative on a theatrical return.”
The Lion King musical is history's highest-grossing single entertainment product
“The Lion King musical has grossed over eleven billion dollars in total revenue in its run, which I think makes it the single highest grossing entertainment product in history, in any medium, film, music, TV, video games, other Broadway shows.”
Gilbert: Netflix's operating income matches Disney's total company operating income
“Netflix's operating income on streaming, their entire business is the same as Disney's entire company operating income.”
Rosenthal: Eisner and Wells were the greatest media management duo
“Arguably the greatest two-person management team in media company history, Michael Eisner and Frank Wells.”
Disney and Nintendo are the only two true IP flywheel companies
“Which really just shows how the companies, they are the two flywheel companies. They are the two intellectual property flywheel companies out there.”
Film production is a mediocre business except for Disney
“The business of feature film production is a mediocre one, especially by the standards of what we study on this show here with Acquired, except for Disney.”
Disney invented the flywheel business model concept
“And they really did invent the entire concept of the flywheel business model that so many entrepreneurs are trying to copy.”
Disney's enterprise value traces back to losing the Oswald IP
“Really like Everything in Disney's history and all of the enterprise value that Disney has built that we will see all across the rest of this episode traces back to this moment.”
Michael Ovitz proposed that Disney acquire Yahoo and CBS Records
“When I went to Disney, I put together seven initiatives. That I wrote about in the book that would have made Disney a fortune, starting with buying Yahoo, buying CBS records for two billion dollars, which is worth 10 times, 20 times that right now.”
Gilbert: Toy Story franchise generated at least $3.5B in direct revenue for Disney
“Toy Story alone did over four billion at the box office, which means one and a half to two billion to Disney. Thirty billion in retail sales so far. Lifetime of all Toy Story consumer goods. So with Disney's five percent licensing fee on that, that's another t…”
Comcast launched a $54B hostile stock bid for Disney in 2004
“Comcast, the Philadelphia based cable company,
Is making a hostile takeover bid to acquire Disney for fifty four billion dollars in Comcast stock.”
ESPN and cable networks drove 60% of Disney's operating income from 2008-2011
“So we're flashing forward, but later on, in the 2008 to 2011 time frame, Disney's cable networks segment, of which analysts believe that three quarters of the cable network segment is ESPN, that segment accounted for 60% of the entire company's operating incom…”
Rosenthal: 43% of Disney shareholders withheld support for Eisner in 2004
“At the end of the day, 43% of the shareholder base votes to withhold support for Eisner as CEO, which is a huge number.”
Disney fired John Lasseter, Tim Burton, and Brad Bird early on
“I mean, so there's people I mentioned, John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Tim Burton, John Musker, Brenda Chapman, all of them were hired directly by Disney and Disney Animation right out of school, and then Disney fired all of them.”
Disney's live-action film studio hit a 27-of-33 profitability run under Eisner
“All told, 27 of their first 33 movies that they make are profitable, which, in Hollywood, to have a hit rate like that, that's like making 33 venture capital investments and only losing money in six of them.”
Disney made just $7 million total profit on first-run features through 1957
“If you add up all the pluses and all the minuses, by 1957, the money they had made ever in profit dollars from their first release films was a hair over seven million dollars.”
Disney had a sub-$90 million market cap when Warren Buffett invested
“Buffett bought a bunch of the stock in 66, since it had a market cap under ninety million dollars at the time. The company was doing twenty one million in pre-tax earnings, and at this point, because this is after Disneyland, this is after a bunch of stuff, it…”
Disney's profits dwarf classic Hollywood studio peers
“And when you look at Disney's profits today, it is in a whole different league than Paramount or Universal or Warner Brothers or any of the other sort of classic Hollywood studios.”
Eisner, Wells, and Katzenberg led media's greatest turnaround
“And those three men, Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, would pull off probably the greatest media company comeback in history.”
Disney has insulated itself from hit dependency as much as possible
“They can't fully avoid being a hits-based business. They are a movie studio, but they've gotten about as far away from it as they possibly can.”
Snow White released the first commercial movie soundtrack album in history
“Snow White Was the very first movie soundtrack ever created and sold to the public. It all started with Snow White. There were no sound movie soundtrack albums before then.”
Disney's film division made just $2.2 million operating income in 1984
“But then, 12 years later, by the end of this period in 1984, parks and consumer products generate two hundred and fifty million dollars of operating income on over a billion dollars in revenue, while film and TV barely breaks even with only 2.2 million dollars…”
Disney did not fully own Disneyland and its assets until 1982
“The headline is, the Walt Disney Company would not actually own the park and everything within its borders for a full 27 years after opening in 1982.”
Disney did $300 million in Davy Crockett merchandise sales
“In total, Disney would go on to do around three hundred million dollars Of gross sales of Davy Crockett merchandise”
99.95% of Disney's market cap was created after Walt Disney died
“And if you look at the company's market cap today compared to where it was in 1966, 99.95% of the value was created after Walt Disney died.”
Disney traded sportscaster Al Michaels to NBC for Oswald the Rabbit
“Al Michaels, the Monday Night Football commentator, like a sports team trade, to NBC in exchange for the IP rights to Oswald the Rabbit.”
Ub Iwerks was the Steve Wozniak to Walt Disney's Steve Jobs
“I sort of think of Ub as the Steve Wozniak of Disney.”
Disney Parks generates $36 billion in revenue and $10 billion in profit
“Disney Parks and Cruises today does thirty six billion dollars in revenue and ten billion dollars in profit per year. That is twice the amount of profit that their entertainment division produces.”
Gilbert: Michael Eisner Grew Disney Revenue From $1.7B to $31B
“By the numbers, Michael's tenure was unbelievable. He comes in with a market cap a little shy of two billion, leaves with it worth, I don't know, fifty-ish billion. I think there was some dilution, so it wasn't quite a 25 X, closer to a twenty-X of the stock. …”
Rosenthal: Disney operating profit increased nearly 8x between 1984 and 1994
“Operating profit at the company goes from well under three hundred million when they take over in 1984 to just under two billion a decade later. So, you know, almost, what's that, eight X operating profit in a decade.”
Disney park ticket prices remained essentially flat from 1966 to 1984
“Ticket prices at the Disney parks have basically been flat since Walt died.”
Rosenthal: Disney's $19B ABC deal was history's second-largest acquisition
“Michael strikes a deal for the Walt Disney Company to acquire ABC Capital Cities for nineteen billion dollars, which was the second largest acquisition in history to that point.”
Disney settled Jeffrey Katzenberg's bonus lawsuit for a reported $280 million
“He also sues the Walt Disney Company for bonuses that he was owed. They end up settling that lawsuit many years later for a reported two hundred and eighty million dollars.”
Rosenthal: Bass family acquired ~25% stake in Disney in 1984
“And in the midst of all this, desperate to ward off these corporate raiders, management strikes a series of friendly deals with four oil and gas and real estate brothers in Fort Worth, Texas, the Bass family and their famous investment manager, Richard Rainwat…”
Rosenthal: Disney+ hit 10 million signups in 24 hours
“Disney gets ten million signups within the first 24 hours. Twenty-six million in the first quarter.”
Gilbert: Silver Screen financed all 75 Disney films over eight years
“So for each of the films, all 75 films they would make over the next eight years, those were financed by a partner called Silver Screens.”
Disney+ Reached 100M Subscribers Within 16 Months
“When they announced Disney Plus originally, Disney said that their goal was to get 60 to ninety million subscribers within five years. All of a sudden, COVID happens. Everybody's sitting at home. Disney gets a hundred million subscribers within 16 months.”
Rosenthal: Home video became Disney's second-largest profit center after parks
“So home video quickly becomes a billion dollar business for the Walt Disney Company. It's the second biggest profit center for the whole company after the theme parks.”
Rosenthal: Roy Disney launched SaveDisney.com campaign to oust Eisner
“Roy and Stanley gold, his business partner, who also resigns from the board would promptly turn around and launch a first of its kind public grassroots shareholder campaign with the website, savedisney.com. With the stated goal of mounting a proxy vote to oust…”