Peltz Publishes ‘Restore the Magic’ Plan for Disney

Nelson Peltz is out with a manifesto for change over at Disney. Here it is. It's a 133 page white paper entitled Restore the Magic at the Walt Disney Company. It was released on Monday and in it helps us try and fund management cemented its demands for an overhaul of Disney's board, as well as a recasting of its business strategy. Bloomberg's Chris Palmeri has more from L.A.. So, Chris, a lot of demands here, some of them familiar, including adding Nelson Peltz and the former Disney CFO Jay Fasu

lo, to the board, along with coming up and putting in place a succession plan to Bob Iger. And of course, this is something that investors have been calling for for a while, along with some other things like cutting costs and clarifying a digital strategy. This is all in the lead up to a very important meeting next month, isn't it? Yeah, Disney annual meeting a little later than normal this year. But two proxy fights, essentially two activist investors trying to get board seats. Very unusual. An

d this is a this is a big one. I mean, Nelson Peltz obviously has a track record of doing these things. Whether he's successful this time, we'll see next month. I mean, how much can we put how much stock can we put in that track record, Chris? I mean, I went through this report here and it reads like a list of grievances. When I go back to other reports that I've seen from other activist investors, including Starboard and a few others. You have these lengthy reports, but a good chunk of those re

ports are about the solutions. What are the solutions other than putting him and Jay on the board? Right. Yeah. I also read 133 pages, not a whole lot of specifics in terms of what Nelson and Jeffries would do differently. Couple of minor things. He said that he thinks they should find a partner for their traditional TV networks, ABC, and that that's something that Bob Iger, Disney CEO, floated last year then backtracked on. There's also a recommendation in there that they do a better job of par

tnering of, say, for example, selling ESPN plus along with Netflix. And that's that type of situation. But in terms of what specifically he'd do differently, no, not a lot in there. I guess this is something that everyone would wait for if he and Rossello were named to the board. Why Disney, Chris? Why is Nelson Peltz focused on this company in particular? You can look at Warner Brothers Discovery, for instance, which has done even worse since the stock debuted in April of 2022. We know that Dis

ney has certainly underperformed the S&P 500, but what is it about Disney that's vulnerable and therefore appealing to Peltz right now? Well, yeah, I mean, all of the big traditional media companies have gotten black. You know, Nelson does make a pretty strong case in there that Disney has underperformed in recent years, both the financial results and the stock price performance. And Disney, though, has great assets. And unlike, say, Warner Brothers or Paramount, like you mentioned, it's not as

dependent on the traditional TV business as those folks. They have a huge theme park business. For example, they've already built a very sizable 200 million or so streaming customers. So those assets make Disney a little more appealing than the, you know, the general media company right now.