Gotta be honest, after seeing Disney's Q3 report and diving into the details, it really does seem like the Fox merger was quite dilutive even though the overall rationale still makes complete sense. [I'd say the same if Comcast had acquired it.]
Price doesn't matter for a "unique" asset like this (especially given there was a bidding war), but the real value is Hulu, Star India, FX, National Geographic as well as their assets in South America, and then some of the tv/movie assets like X-Men/FF, Avatar, Simpsons and the other movie franchises that can be recycled.
But the price for that real value was very steep as the Disney earnings report showed. The Fox assets all told will likely produce somewhere around $20-22 billion in revenue this year but paying $85 billion in stock/cash/debt-assumed is a huge 4x revenue multiplier for media assets which are not anywhere near as valuable on a dollar-for-dollar basis as the remainder of Disney.
Traditional media assets typically carry a 1-2x multiplier, so it's extremely dilutive when you just consider the revenue aspect.
Obviously, Disney has overcome the dilution with their Disney+ announcement, and the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle looks extremely attractively priced and so that's really where Disney can make up for any loss of value on the assets that they acquired.
Will definitely need to follow Fox's studio closely though, we could see Disney trim off most of it or have them seriously shrink down to a 10-12 movie slate where 50% of the movies end up on Disney+ or Hulu.
Price doesn't matter for a "unique" asset like this (especially given there was a bidding war), but the real value is Hulu, Star India, FX, National Geographic as well as their assets in South America, and then some of the tv/movie assets like X-Men/FF, Avatar, Simpsons and the other movie franchises that can be recycled.
But the price for that real value was very steep as the Disney earnings report showed. The Fox assets all told will likely produce somewhere around $20-22 billion in revenue this year but paying $85 billion in stock/cash/debt-assumed is a huge 4x revenue multiplier for media assets which are not anywhere near as valuable on a dollar-for-dollar basis as the remainder of Disney.
Traditional media assets typically carry a 1-2x multiplier, so it's extremely dilutive when you just consider the revenue aspect.
Obviously, Disney has overcome the dilution with their Disney+ announcement, and the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle looks extremely attractively priced and so that's really where Disney can make up for any loss of value on the assets that they acquired.
Will definitely need to follow Fox's studio closely though, we could see Disney trim off most of it or have them seriously shrink down to a 10-12 movie slate where 50% of the movies end up on Disney+ or Hulu.