Disney wants higher valuation but Wall Street hesitates
Hollywood Newsroom is now Buzz Newsroom! Visit and bookmark our new site. Buzz is bigger and better, including sports, world news, gadgets and the entertainment news that you're used to. Same staff, just more stuff! Why Fark, Drudge and Huffington when you can Buzz!?Walt Disney Co is waging a campaign to convince investors that its product range and brand make it more valuable than media peers and more like a consumer goods company — but so far that has proved a hard sell on Wall Street.
On calls with analysts and at investor conferences since November, Chief Executive Bob Iger and Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs have argued that the second-largest U.S. entertainment company should be viewed as a stable global brand rather than a cyclical, hit-driven media business.
“I think we should be considered differently from our peers … hopefully that translates into value as well,” Iger said on Tuesday at the opening of the Toy Story Mania ride at Disney’s California Adventure theme park in Anaheim, California.
Disney executives have been touting “the Disney Difference” — the company’s growing stable of characters, its ability to apply them to all its businesses and its growing global reach — as elements that set the company apart from media rivals.
- from Reuters