Iger’s Annual Investor Meeting is a Dumpster Fire
Wow, this is going to take me some digging to get through.
Usually, Disney’s annual investor call is a completely stage-managed nothing burger. Basically, it’s just a public relations dog and pony show for the Mom and Pop shareholders. This year Disney showed some little film that was made at Disney World. There was a startling number of white people in it, veterans got a nice shout-out, it was that kind of thing and it’s always that kind of thing.
The end of the program is the CEO taking calls from the aforementioned Mom and Pop investors. Iger being something of a showman had always seemed to regard it as a highlight. Now usually these questions are about things that Pixie Dusters care about, will there be a new Adventurers Club? Will Dole Whip ever be available in malls? The answer to these questions is always “no” by the way.
The thing is, this is nothing but public relations because the people whose questions really matter have Iger on speed dial. The institutional investors control Disney and these folks aren’t them.
Bob Chapek did exactly one of these and got raked over the coals, and never did another one.
Iger holds his predecessor in such contempt he was convinced the same thing could never happen to him or he could handle it if it did.
Well it did and Bob Iger ended up presenting a compelling argument for replacing him with 81-year-old Michael Eisner.
Iger was Captain Double Down throughout the entire call. Clearly, small-cap investors were giving fake answers to the screeners because there is no way they should have gotten through otherwise.
When asked about Disney’s pro-trans, pro-grooming agenda, Iger declared it to be no different from the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
When asked about Reedy Creek, Iger declaimed DeSantis as being not just anti-business but anti-Florida. DeSantis had to be grateful for that one, anything to get the spotlight off Trump just for a minute.
There were some stock-owning Pixie-Dusters who were clearly and obviously upset, they wanted to know when Disney was going back to being the company you could trust your children with. In effect, Iger has said that Disney is never going to be that company again so long as he is CEO. Disney is doubling down.
This was all paraphrasing on my part and I’m going to have to go through this again more thoroughly. The next 48 hours should be very interesting.
Developing.
UPDATE: I missed something huge. Iger may have made a multi-billion-dollar fuckup during that call. He called DeSantis’s shutting down of Reedy Creek a retaliation against Disney. That is, to put it mildly, a damaging admission. The Reedy Creek Improvement District was legally a separate entity from the Walt Disney Company. Iger effectively admitted that Reedy Creek and Disney were the same entity. This was stated while he was acting in his official capacity as the Chief Officer of the Walt Disney Company.
SECOND UPDATE: Kind of minor but tragic. Dwayne Johnson will be starring in a live action remake of…MOANA.