Two-time Disney CEO Bob Iger might be prepping his company for a buyout — and the Hollywood Reporter rumor mill speculates that the buyer could be consumer electronics giant Apple.
According to “a veteran Hollywood executive” who spoke with the Reporter’s Kim Masters and Alex Weprin, Iger’s recent comments hint at a possible sale. He hinted to CNBC last month that Disney could divest itself of old-school TV networks like ABC and FX, and other properties that “may not be core” to the Mouse House.
“I don’t think [Apple] would buy the company as it presently exists,” the Hollywood vet told the Hollywood Reporter, “But if you see Bob start to divest things… that feels like he’s prepping for a sale. And there’s clearly no buyer like Apple.”
Apple-Disney is the merger and acquisition rumor that will not die. It’s been at least a dozen years since the first time I read it, probably because it does make a certain kind of sense.
Or at least it used to, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
Disney’s market cap is about $161 billion, and according to Apple’s latest quarterly results, announced just last week, the company has $166.5 billion in cash on hand. Cupertino could buy out all of Disney’s outstanding shares with the money CEO Tim Cook has stuffed under the mattress.
Not really, since Disney shares would surge on the news and because the notoriously tight-fisted Cook would never part with that much cash. But, yes, Apple could gain a controlling interest in Disney without taking on massive debt.
Apple does buy other companies but always just to gain a particular technology or talent. The biggest deal by far Apple ever made was for Beats back in 2014 for $3 billion. Cupertino has never tried to buy a company anything close to Disney’s size.
Still, Disney and Apple long had a special relationship. Disney was the distributor of Pixar movies while Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was the CEO of both Apple and Pixar. Disney was one of the first studios to provide its video content to Apple’s nascent iTunes movie and TV show stores.
Apple needed content and Disney needed screens in the growing mobile and home entertainment fields. Also, Apple’s iTunes store and App Store are generally family-friendly places, just like Disney, with zero tolerance for pr0n. Jobs and Iger even served on one another’s corporate boards. The symbiosis between the two was undeniable.
But if an Apple-Disney merger — buyout, really, given how much bigger Apple is now than Disney — made sense back then, it makes less sense now.
Apple Studios already produces well-regarded content for the Apple TV+ streaming service. Apple TV+ is part of Apple’s fast-growing (and highly profitable) Services segment. The Disney+ streaming service loses billions. The Hollywood Reporter says that Disney has “a vault full of priceless IP and remains the most valuable brand in entertainment,” but how true is that still?
Disney-owned Marvel Studios and Pixar both seem to be spent creative forces, Star Wars is controlled by people who despise Star Wars fans, and Disney is busy tarnishing its original intellectual properties with money-losing reboots and remakes. The live-action Snow White, due out next year, looks like something I watched on TV in the ’90s — roasted by Mystery Science Theater 3000. Apple has kept its products and services mostly family-friendly. Disney has done just about everything Woke except open a Magic Kingdom Gender Reassignment Clinic for Kids.
Even a slimmed-down Disney, divested of legacy properties like ESPN and ABC, doesn’t look like anything that Apple would want to take a single bite of.
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