What Wall Street sees as Disney's long-term value has not grown in the roughly 11 years since the 2015 ESPN earnings call, despite revenue and profits rising since then.
The hosts argue that Disney's stock is flat to where it was 11 years ago, even though the S&P 500 tripled, indicating the market no longer believes Disney's future cash flows are worth more than they were then. ✦ AI generated
Ben Gilbert · Acquired · 2026-08-10 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 300:00
And we should say, just so we don't bury the lead, Disney's stock price today is what it was then. It's gone up and down, but it is flat to 11 years ago. Meanwhile, the S&P 500, David, what did you tell me is up how much in that time? Three and a half x over that time period.
verbatim transcript · starts at 300:00
(03:00:20) knew that this was coming like you said, but I mean Netflix was already a $50 billion market cap company at this point. So, shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. But the very next day, Disney stock drops 10%. And over the next couple days, Fox, Time Warner, and Discovery all experience similar draw downs. And Viacom, which people view as even more indexed to the cable network landscape,
(03:00:48) gets whacked over 20%. >> And we should say, just so we don't bury the lead, Disney's stock price today is what it was then. >> Y >> it's gone up and down, but it is flat to 11 years ago. >> Yeah. >> Meanwhile, the S&P 500, David, what did you tell me is up how much in that time? >> Three and a halfx over that time period.
(03:01:08) >> Yeah. Now, market cap isn't everything, but it is a measure of what the investment community believes your company's cash flows are worth in the extreme long run. So, we're not here saying, you know, Disney's revenues been flat or profits been flat, although we we'll get to all that. But what we are saying is 11 years ago, people thought Disney's future was exactly as bright in the form of future
(03:01:35) cash flows that they believe today. >> Yep. Well, we're about to talk about what happens to the whole rest of the traditional media landscape after this earnings call. >> Yeah. Disney managed to stay independent. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, that moment kicks off I really don't know how to say it other than the most insane period of panicked frenzy in media landscape history. I mean, maybe in any industry's history.