Essay: The Walt Disney Company analysis

INTRODUCTION

Ranking fifth in Fortune’s Most Admired Companies 2017, placing just behind the likes of Google and Amazon (Fortune 2017), Disney has secured its place among the top companies for yet another year. It comes to no surprise, for The Walt Disney Company has been around and successful long before most people currently alive were even born. The Walt Disney Company was founded as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in 1923 California by Walt Disney and his brother Roy O. Disney (The Walt Disney Company 2016). The short film Alice’s Wonderland marked their first success and from there the company tightened its grip on the film industry. In the timespan of almost a century, the company has now grown from the animated film company it was, to the omnipresent media conglomerate that we know today. Headquartered in Burbank, California, the company now consists of four business units operating worldwide: Studio Entertainment, ever further developing the company’s film business; Media Network, dedicated to its television production and distribution channels; Parks and Resorts, which manages the collection of now fourteen holiday resorts throughout the world, including the Disney Cruise Lines; and Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media, in charge of merchandise and all activities related to social media and internet innovations (The Walt Disney Company 2016). The Walt Disney Company is managed by Robert A. Iger, former president of the company and current CEO. Under his leadership, the company generated a total revenue of $55,632 million in 2016 and a net income of $15,721 million (The Walt Disney Company 2016). But while the success of The Walt Disney Company is evident and the conglomerate seems invincible – it has even been called “a business with arguably the best portfolio of entertainment content on the planet” (Smith 2017, p. 1) – it does face some threats. These threats are discussed in the first part of our work, followed by an analysis of their effects on Disney’s stock position and attractiveness to investors. The larger part of our research is dedicated to how Disney anticipates the effects of these threats and how it translates this in strategies for the future. In this segment, we elaborate on their two main strategies, namely international expansion and entrance of the Asian market in particular, and the remarkable investment behavior, vital to the expansion of the conglomerate.

THREATS

That even, or maybe especially, businesses the size of Disney are prone to threats from the external environment is a fact well-acknowledged by the company itself, proven by their extensive elaboration on the issue in their 2016 Annual Report (The Walt Disney Company 2016). In this 113 page document, the company lists fluctuations in currency rates, bad weather conditions, terrorist attacks and political and military development as potentially affecting their business. Among the biggest threats, however, are poor economic developments, natural disasters and competition, largely, but not exclusively, impacting the Parks and Resorts segment (The Walt Disney Company 2016). These three threats all individually have the potential to prevent customers from visiting the parks, resorts and cruise lines.

The impact of the economic environment was experienced during the first years of crisis in 2008 and 2009. The 2008 and 2009 Annual Reports show a 6% and 25% decrease in net income, respectively. These numbers are in sharp contrast with the positive growth of 8%, 33% and 39% in 2005, 2006 and 2007 (The Walt Disney Company 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009). The economic climate of the early years of crisis had a considerable impact on the company’s own financial performance. Moreover, Disney relies heavily on the performance of third parties to which the company licenses goods and services. The licensees pay royalties in exchange for use of patented property, like the Disney characters. When, thus, during an economic crisis the profits of these third parties decline, the income in royalties decline, causing an immediate effect on Disney’s profits as well.

Natural disasters form a threat of another, but not less severe, order. Not only can a natural disaster be the cause of various reasons customers might not be able to visit the park, it also comes with a tremendous cost of reconstruction in case one of the parks gets hit.

While the economic and natural environment might cause problems only ever so often, the threat of competition is one that is always present and should be anticipated at any time, and Disney forms no exception to this. The entertainment industry knows many enterprises competing for a finite number of customers. In an environment like that, considerable growth of one company is often directly correlated with a decrease in revenue for another. In the case of the Parks and Resorts segment, this could lead to lower resort occupation and decreasing numbers of visitors overall. The company constantly strives for an excellent guest experience, in an attempt to keep the visitors coming back (Rawson, Duncan & Jones 2013, p. 1). But not only the Parks and Resort segment is prone to competition, so is the Media Network division. The segment responsible for television production and distribution has been challenged to compete with rising streaming services like Netflix, who have accumulated incredible numbers of customers in the previous years, thus forming a substantial threat to The Walt Disney Company (DeTar 2014, p. 1). In reaction to this threat, Disney has announced plans to release its own streaming service (Kain 2017, p. 1). Initiatives like this are part of larger strategies to stay ahead of competition worldwide. These strategies will be the focal point for the main part of this work. To better understand the financial market reactions to the above-mentioned threats, we first investigate the Walt Disney stock development. These developments provide a starting point for further analysis.

STOCKS

Financial markets are fast to react to developments concerning a business, whether it be internal or external developments, positive or negative. The publication of quarterly reports often causes share prices to rise or decrease and so do external developments, like economic crises. The behaviour of share prices is, therefore, a useful measure to indicate the impact a specific event has on the value the public ascribes to a company.

Currently, the market cap of Disney, the total value of all of Disney stock, amounts to $159,54 billion (Yahoo Finance, 2017). Moreover, with 1.46, Disney’s beta coefficient, a measure of volatility, is considerably higher than the overall market’s beta coefficient. This explains how Disney stock does not always follow the fluctuations in the market, but has been able to maintain a relative stability (Downie 2016, p. 1). Disney owes this relative stability to its long tradition as a trustworthy company and the positive brand image that results from it. Despite this image, however, the company has endured some strong fluctuations in its stock in the recent years, both positive and negative and resulting from internal as well as from external events.

The current share price fluctuates around the $100, but decreased to a mere $15,80 in 2009, with the outbreak of the financial crisis. Since this low, Disney’s stock price has increased gradually and stock prices in 2015 were already 659% of what they had been during the first years of crisis. The company management decided to raise its dividend payout over the years in an attempt to make the stock attractive to investors again. As investors gradually seemed to rate Disney stock as offering a balance between growth potential and low-risk characteristics, the strategy seemed to work (Downie 2016, p. 1). Disney share prices even increased considerably faster than the S&P 500 Index did, which is a notable measure for overall growth of the market. Over the last five years, the value of Disney stock has doubled from $50,08 to $101,61 (Yahoo Finance 2017).

Although severe falls have been scarce in this period, there have been a few incidences. In the past months, for instance, Disney shares have dropped 7,2% after CEO Bob Iger presented a disappointing Q3 report. That report showed decreasing profits for Disney’s cable network ESPN, following competition from online streaming services like Netflix (The Walt Disney Company 2017). In response to this competition, Disney has gradually reduced the weight of ESPN earnings on the segment’s total, from 44% in 2015 to less than 20% now. In the same report, the company announced that just two of the four divisions reached their revenue goals. Studio Entertainment and Parks and Resorts exceeded the forecasts, while the Media Networks and the Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media segment underperformed (Wang, C 2017). The difficulties for ESPN have caused some negative publicity, but the overall strength of the business, along with a cheap valuation, seems to be scaring shorts away, resulting in a rather stable share price at the moment; between September 7th and November 3rd, stock prices increased from $97,06 to $98,64. The resistance level of the Disney stock, the value at which the price tends to bounce back, seems to be at $120,07, the maximum value of the stock in the last five years (Yahoo Finance 2017). Major fluctuations in Disney stock have been caused by the financial crisis and the rise of competition. It should come as no surprise, then, that the strategies Disney employs to ensure future growth revolve around spreading risk and combating competition. Two prominent measures through which Disney attempts to combat competition are optimizing their own products and services and investing in sustainable customer relationships. These are discussed in the following section.

STRIVING FOR PERFECTION

In an attempt to face up to the competition from rivalling theme parks, Disney’s Parks and Resort segment is continually striving to perfect its products and services. These measures are aimed at attracting new clientele and building a crowd of loyal customers. One challenge in this endeavour is to make the parks fit to the wants and needs of the local public. While The Walt Disney Company strives for the same customer experience throughout the world, the way they accomplish this is not the same everywhere. The Hong Kong Disneyland, for instance, incorporates many aspects of the Chinese culture in its shows that are not found in parks in the United States and Europe (Barnes 2014, p. 1). This illustrates one of the ways Disney attempts to orchestrate a magical experience that resonates with its visitors daily life.

Another strategy Disney employs to turn visitors into loyal customers, is outlined by their Four Keys of Success: safety, courtesy, show and efficiency (Disneyland Paris 2017). With such tremendous amounts of customers visiting the parks and entering the rides, safety is Disney’s top concern. In total, the company employs 145.000 engineers, mechanics and other technicians that perform around-the-clock safety inspections (Walt Disney Parks and Resorts 2017). These safety checks and the efficient organizing of all processes happen mostly behind the screens. The other two keys, courtesy and show, are what excites the magical Disney experience in visitors, as Disney employees are there to serve the customer and never break character while doing so. An employee dressed as Mickey Mouse, thus, will always be Mickey Mouse, no matter the circumstances. To perfect their performance, employees go through a strict training and follow a meticulous script (Disneyland Paris 2017).

With strategies like these, other challenges arise; more specifically, the challenge of managing large crowds moving around the park. To avoid the large amounts of visitors from affecting each other’s pleasant experience, Disney offers them a chance to avoid queues through fast-passes. For true loyal customers, the company offers ‘annual passports’, that allow visits to more than one of the parks, and ‘golden passes’ that allow customers to visit all the Disney parks in the world (Disneyland Resort 2017).

To successfully stay ahead of the competition, however, the company does not only perfect its current products and services, but continually works on offering new opportunities as well. Eighteen years into its existence, Tokyo Disney Resort, for example, expanded massively with the opening of Tokyo DisneySea, a theme park on the property of the resort (Verrier R, 2001, p. 1).

The most impressive innovations, of course, are not the improvement and expansion of existing parks, but the creation of completely new parks in parts of the world yet untouched by the Disney empire. The way these parks have come into being, however, has not always been the same. A development in Disney’s strategy becomes apparent when analyzing previous endeavours. This will be the topic of the following paragraph. The conclusions that can be drawn from this, form the outlines of Disney’s expansion strategy for the future.

INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION STRATEGY

The Walt Disney Company has quite a history of international business, with their first overseas Disneyland in 1983, in Tokyo. Several have followed in recent years with possibly many more in the years to come. One decisive factor that makes expansion to mostly Asian markets crucial, is the fact that the United States and European markets are slowly saturating for The Walt Disney Company. After a long history of serving these regions, the company is now reaching a point where expansion does not lead to many more customers (Trefis Team. 2012). On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, however, there is still a lot to gain. According to a Forbes research, Disney’s revenue from international markets currently represents a surprisingly low proportion of 25% of Disney’s total revenue and only 10% if the European market is not taken into account (Trefis Team 2012).  The Asian market seems ready to adequately respond to Disney’s arrival; Asian developing countries show an astonishing growth of 6% of GDP per year, with 6.8% in India and 6.6% in China (Obiols 2017, p. 1). Such strong growth drives the emergence of a potent middle class with increasing purchasing power. This new middle class is willing to spend money on luxuries as leisure activities and television subscriptions to paid tv channels, a promising development for The Walt Disney Company (Miquel 2013, p. 1). This may be particularly profitable for the Media Network segment, which includes ESPN, ABC network and the Disney channel, all of which are losing subscribers in the United States (Miquel 2013, p. 1). These are all compelling reasons for the Walt Disney Company to broaden their horizon and gain access to emerging markets overseas.

The main overseas presence of Disney, however, is not through its Media Network division, but through its Parks and Resorts segment, representing a third of Disney’s total revenue, thus amounting to $16.97 billion in 2016 (The Walt Disney Company 2016). As stated earlier, Disney’s first overseas expansion had been the Tokyo Disneyland in 1983 and several have followed since. The company’s strategy to enter these new international markets, however, has evolved considerably over time.

As Tokyo was their first overseas endeavour and they had little knowledge about the local market and culture, Disney’s top managers were not sure about the success and, as a result, took a rather risk-averting position (Gonzalez 2011, p. 28). When the Oriental Land Company, a Japanese company active in the entertainment industry, offered to collaborate on the project, that opened the door to a licensing agreement between the two parties. Disney adopted an advisory role towards the Oriental Land Company and shared its trademark and intellectual properties necessary to construct the park. The Oriental Land Company agreed to pay Disney 10% of
admission revenues and 5% of food and beverage revenues as royalty fees (Gonzalez 2011, p. 28). Even more than a considerable income, the benefit for The Walt Disney Company was the chance to enter a new, emerging market with a rather low risk in case of failure.

The enterprise did not fail, however, and Disneyland Tokyo became a huge success internationally. This resulted in a re-thinking of strategy for their next international project; Disneyland Paris. With considerable confident, the company was less hesitant to take on more ownership rights. The company wanted to be more involved in the decision-making process of the park and be able to profit more from high revenues. They, therefore, opted for a wholly owned subsidiary as an entry mode to the European market. Other than expected, the process at Disneyland Paris was much more complicated; the cultural difference between the French employees and the American management led to an array of difficulties, and the park did not attain the level of profitability that was expected after the Tokyo success (Gonzalez 2011, p. 35).

Possibly alarmed by the challenges in Disneyland Paris, for the construction of Hong Kong Disneyland in 2005, the company opted for a joint venture agreement. In this agreement, Disney has a stake of 43%, with the remaining 57% belonging to the Hong Kong government (Gonzalez 2011, p. 41). Seeking a partnership with the government offers the benefit of deep knowledge about the local culture, an element insufficiently acknowledged in the Parisian endeavour. Furthermore, in the Asian market, a close relationship to the government certainly aids a smoother transition into the new market and a strong support system when needed. The disadvantage of the agreement, however, is the fact that their minority share does not allow Disney to make decisions about the park, without the government’s consent.

The advantages of the agreement seemed to have outweighed the disadvantages, however, because for their latest international resort, the company opted for a joint venture with a minority share again. In 2016, Disney opened its biggest overseas park in Shanghai, at a cost of $5.5 billion (Kang 2016, p. 1). The company partnered with the Shendi Group, a company owned by the Chinese government, to enter one of the key cities in the world economy for their most recent international expansion. The Shendi Group has a 57% share, leaving 43% for the Walt Disney Company (Kang 2016, p. 1).

All these undertakings illustrate a prominent desire of Disney to expand its activities internationally and more specifically to the Asian market. Whereas their first entrance to the overseas markets was arranged through a low-risk and low-profitability licensing agreement, for their next activities, the company opted for more ownership and higher revenues through joint ventures and a wholly owned subsidiary. Given the still increasing growth of the Asian economy and Disney’s now significant knowledge of the market, one might expect more parks to be constructed with similar forms of high-ownership and high-profitability.

INVESTMENT STRATEGY

While Disney’s Parks and Resort division is entering new markets in Asia to compensate for a saturating market in the United States, the Media Network division and Disney’s Consumer Products and Interactive Media division have adopted other strategies to secure their future business. These strategies can be divided mainly into acquisitions of and joint ventures with established companies in their sector. Steamboat VC, the venture capital branch of the company, on the other hand, involves itself with investing in promising start-ups.

A first prominent example of such acquisitions by The Walt Disney Company is that of Marvel Entertainment. This acquisition can be classified as a horizontal acquisition, meaning both companies were active in the same market and provided similar services to their customers (Pride et al. 2017, pp. 46-47). In 2009, Marvel was acquired by Disney’s Consumer Products and Interactive Media division for $4.24 billion and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the company (Carillo et al. 2012, p. 2). Through this acquisition, Disney has eliminated an important competitor by acquiring the full company and thus increasing their own market share for television and movies.

A strategic choice of another order led Disney to the acquisition of Pixar in 2006 for a mere $7.4 billion (Carillo et al. 2012, p. 2). The cooperation of Disney and Pixar dates back to the nineties of the previous century and has resulted in several well-known movies, among which Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo. While Disney distributed these movies, Pixar was the producer, thus creating a relationship of buyer and supplier. Since Disney, as a buyer, acquired the supplier, this transaction is an illustrative example of a vertical acquisition (Pride et al. 2017, pp. 46-47). As is often the case with vertical acquisitions, it was Disney’s aim to gain controlling power of Pixar, with which they had been in conflict over contractual negotiations for years prior.

While both Marvel and Pixar are now wholly owned subsidiaries of the Walt Disney Company, that is not the case for Hulu. Hulu is a streaming service, established in 2007 that forms a joint venture with several content providers that distribute their movies and series on the Hulu platform. Among those content providers is Disney, with a 30% share since 2009 (The Walt Disney Company 2016). Hulu is a strategic addition to broadcasting channels that Disney already uses, thus creating an even larger presence on television screens worldwide.

Marvel, Pixar and Hulu are just three examples of collaborations that the Walt Disney Company engages in, but there are many more; the total costs for joint ventures reached $109 million in 2016, while the acquisition costs even added up to $850 million (The Walt Disney Company 2016). And although the partnerships might have a different structure and might have different motives behind them, they do have some things in common as well. Most notably, all these companies are active in the media and entertainment business, thus contributing to the further expansion of Disney as an entertainment conglomerate. Secondly, and Disney states that as one of the requirements for cooperation (The Walt Disney Company 2016), Disney has the intention to build long-term partnerships with these companies, interlacing them with the Walt Disney Company as much as possible.

Besides acquiring and entering joint ventures with established companies to expend the Walt Disney conglomerate, the company also invests in young companies. This it does through its venture capital branch, Steamboat VC, which was founded in 2000 (Steamboat VC 2016). Steamboat VC offers expansion capital to young companies that are active mostly in the media and technology sector, mainly in the United States and Asia. One of these companies is GoPro, widely known for its wearable action cameras. Besides this capital, ranging from $2 million to $20 million per company, Steamboat takes board seats and advises its clients on how to become the leading experts in their business (Steamboat VC 2016). Of course, a great advantage of working with Steamboat VC is the immense network surrounding Disney, that Steamboat can facilitate access to. Like the Walt Disney Company itself, Steamboat VC strives for long-term partnerships with the companies it works with.

CONCLUSION

This work opened with the most recent ranking The Walt Disney Company has been honoured with; a top five ranking in Fortune’s Most Admired Companies of 2017. Their repeated high ranking on this list and others alike begs the question: ‘Is there nothing threatening this seemingly perfect media conglomerate?’ This work sets out to investigate just that, with the aim to research what exactly Disney has been doing and probably will do to stay ahead of the fierce competition in the entertainment sector.

A brief investigation into the global climate the company operates in has resulted in a set of threats that have the potential to affect Disney’s business. Among the greatest threats are unfavourable natural disasters, economic conditions and competition. Effects of the last two have been apparent in the fluctuations in Disney stock prices over the past ten years. Despite having been affected by competition from streaming services like Netflix, detrimental to the ESPN revenue, Disney stock prices are relatively stable. What contributes strongly to this stability is the overall positive image of the enterprise as a whole. For this, all employees at all levels of the organisation work hard every day, most notably in the parks throughout the world. Disney invests ample time and money in not only guaranteeing the safety of its visitors, but more so, offering a magical experience. Employees follow an intense training program to stay in character under any circumstances. Another important factor for the success of the parks and resorts, especially in overseas locations, is the ability to adapt to the local culture and adjust appropriately. To ensure this, Disney has in the past partnered with local enterprises and governments, at the same time spreading the risk in case of failure. The advantage of entering new markets seems to outweigh the disadvantage of less ownership and thus less profitability. With the construction of Disney parks in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai, the company’s focus seems to be on the Asian market. Additionally, the annual GDP growth of on average 6% in the region, might underline even stronger the potential this region has in sustaining Disney’s growth throughout the future. In the meantime, the Media Network and Disney’s Consumer Products and Interactive Media division alone have invested close to $1 billion last year in joint ventures and acquisitions, not including the millions of dollars Steamboat VC invests in various start-ups in the field of media and technology. These amounts suggest Disney holds the view that offence is the best defence and that this is not the last year we have seen them hold a top position in the Fortune ranking.

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