Changing landscape: Visitors at a Shanghai Disneyland theme park. Third Point plans to push the company to make a string of changes. —Bloomberg
NEW YORK: Hedge fund Third Point has disclosed a stake of roughly US$1bil (RM4.46bil) in Walt Disney Co and said it plans to push the media company to make a string of changes, from spinning off cable sports channel ESPN to buying back shares and adding new board members.
Billionaire investor Daniel Loeb, who runs Third Point, made a U-turn on Disney when he built a new stake in the second quarter, not long after exiting his position months earlier when fears about rising prices and faster interest rate hikes sparked a sharp market sell-off.
Now Third Point, owning roughly 0.4% of the company known for its theme parks and movies like Aladdin and Frozen, is back with praise for the company’s CEO, Robert Chapek, and a list of initiatives he and the board should pursue to boost growth.
“Our confidence in Disney’s current trajectory is such that we have, in recent weeks, repurchased a significant stake in the company,” Loeb wrote to Chapek in a letter seen by Reuters.
Loeb wrote after Disney said quarterly profit jumped 50% and its streaming subscriptions overtook Netflix’s.
Chapek has weathered criticism in Hollywood over a 2021 dispute with Scarlett Johansson, the star of the Marvel film Black Widow, and a political storm over the company’s response to a new education law in Florida, where the company employs some 80,000 people.
Disney initially kept quiet about the measure, which limits classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation, prompting criticism from that community and some employees.
It later condemned the law, causing Florida governor Ron DeSantis to rail against “Woke Disney.” — Reuters
