Samuel Ziff of Oldfield Partners presented his thesis on The Walt Disney Company (US: DIS) at European Investing Summit 2026.
Thesis summary:
The Walt Disney Company is a $180bn business whose IP goes back over a century. Sam notes that Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi all came out between 1937 and 1942 and still earn money through Disney+, the parks and merchandise. Disney took a lot of pain moving from cable to streaming; Sam believes it is through the worst, yet the shares trade at a multi-year low valuation.
The moat is the flywheel Walt Disney sketched in 1957: a hit film creates characters that sell toys and bring visitors to the parks, and animated characters outlive any actor. Disney took $6.6bn at the 2025 box office versus $4.3bn for Warner Bros., leads licensed retail sales at $63bn, and runs eight of the ten most-visited parks. Stitch merchandise rose from $0.2bn in 2019 to over $4bn in FY2025; Toy Story has earned ~$16.2bn of direct revenue from the $7.4bn Pixar deal.
Experiences (parks, cruises and products) earns about 60% of segment profit, $10.0bn of $17.6bn in FY25, from roughly 40% of revenue at a ~30% margin; that profit has doubled since FY15. A Disneyland ticket rose from $1 in 1955 to $224, 8% a year compounded and ~20x in real terms. A $60bn ten-year plan targets double-digit returns, two new ships lift cruise capacity 50%, and Abu Dhabi follows the capital-light Tokyo model with partner Miral.
Sam argues Disney rebuilds its revenue mix whenever distribution changes. TV money funded Disneyland; the $19bn Capital Cities/ABC deal brought ESPN and lifted Media Networks profit from $1.7bn (FY1997) to $7.8bn (FY2016). Streaming lost $4.0bn in FY22; after Bob Iger returned, price rises, a password-sharing crackdown and folding in Hulu brought breakeven in FY24 and a 13% margin in Q3 FY26. Free cash flow runs at 90-95% of earnings, and buybacks have cut the share count about 5% from its post-Fox peak.
At $105 (28 September 2026), Disney trades at 14x FY27 consensus EPS of $7.50, versus a 21x median P/E since 1980, and 1.9x price/sales (EV/sales 2.3x). Sam’s base case, 20x on $7.50, gives $150, 42% upside; his bear case, 12x on $6.50 in a recession, gives $78, 26% lower, which he sees as temporary. Risks are the parks cycle, the creative hit rate (no original $1bn film since Zootopia), linear TV and sports costs, ROIC near 9% since Fox, and untested CEO Josh D’Amaro.
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