Nelson Peltz, founder and chief executive officer of Trian Fund Management, during the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute Priority Summit in Miami, Florida, US, on Thursday, March 30, 2023.
Marco Bello | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Are you not entertained, Nelson Peltz?
Disney shares jumped 6% in after-market trading Wednesday after the company posted earnings and flooded the zone with new announcements meant not only to excite its employees and shareholders, but also to put activist investor Nelson Peltz in his place.
Peltz has launched a proxy fight against Disney, asking investors to nominate him and former Disney Chief Financial Officer Jay Rasulo to replace current board members Michael Froman and Maria Elena Lagomasino. Both Disney’s higher profits, and string of content and partnership announcements, appeared to form a direct rebuttal to Peltz’s concerns about the company.
“The last thing we need right now is to be distracted by an activist or activists that have a different agenda and don’t understand our company,” Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin in an interview Wednesday.
During his company’s first-quarter earnings conference call, he added, “we have turned the corner and entered a new era.”
Peltz, who first took a stake in Disney last year only to abandon and then renew his proxy fight threats, responded with a statement to CNBC that he won’t be backing down this time.
“It’s deja vu all over again,” Peltz’s firm Trian Fund Management said in a statement. “We saw this movie last year, and we didn’t like the ending.”
It was hard to keep up with Disney’s announcements this quarter:
- ESPN finally set a launch date for its direct-to-consumer service: August or fall of 2025.
- Disney is buying a $1.5 billion stake in Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite. It is Disney’s “biggest foray into the gaming space ever,” Iger said to Boorstin.
- Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour film is coming to Disney+.
- Disney upped its dividend by 50% versus the last dividend…
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