Disney Shares Crushed by S&P 500

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 4, 6:35AM EDT

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Disney Shares Crushed by S&P 500 — © Kimberly White / Getty Images

Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS | DIS Price Prediction) may have won its proxy fight against raider Nelson Peltz. However, its shares are down 13% over the past two years, while the S&P 500 has been up 15%. Without the chance that Peltz would change the company’s shaky plans, the stock has little downside support. A tough quarter could quickly push it lower.

Disney’s most obvious and often talked about problem is that its board has not identified someone, at least publicly, to take CEO Bob Iger’s job. He is in his second run as chief executive. This time, it has been less successful. The board needs to put someone in place, perhaps as chief operating officer, to show it has a plan for managing the company into the next decade. (Disney Stock Price Prediction in 2030: Bull, Base, & Bear Forecasts)

Disney has several other challenges that worry many investors. The first is its streaming business, which has lost billions of dollars since Iger launched it in 2019. Disney+ has over 150 million subscribers, but it also has at least half a dozen powerful competitors. The industry is dominated by leaders Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. With its massive pile of cash, Apple can outlast everyone in the industry with Apple TV+. Warner Bros. Discovery has a service, and Paramount does as well. Alphabet’s YouTube Premium subscription base is growing fast.

Disney has several traditional media operations, including ABC. Legacy media advertising has been under siege for several years, and management cannot reverse an industrywide trend.

And Disney no longer rules the box office with its Marvel and Pixar franchises. Lately, traditional theater ticket sales have been weaker than in most years over the past decade.

Disney has no catalyst to get its share price back online.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.