3. The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 134
The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) is an entertainment and mass media company. It is placed third on our list of 10 best growth stocks to buy right now. The company’s shares have returned more than 52% to investors over the past year. The company has been on a comeback trail in the market as the vaccine rollout allows for the reopening of theme parks and large gatherings. On May 26, the stock was given a Buy rating with a $215 price target by investment advisory UBS, implying 21% upside potential.
The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) represents more than 6.1% of the investment portfolio of Coatue Management. The hedge fund owns more than 6 million shares in the firm worth over $1.1 billion. The fund has trimmed stake in the media company by 45% since last year.
Out of the hedge funds being tracked by Insider Monkey, Washington-based investment firm Fisher Asset Management is a leading shareholder in the firm with 10.3 million shares worth more than $1.9 billion.
Here is what Harding Loevner has to say about The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) in its Q4 2020 investor letter:
“One of the original constituents of the Nifty Fifty holds a place in our portfolio today. When we bought Disney three years ago, we wrote that “we view Disney theme parks in the US, Europe, and China as resistant to online substitution.” We did not reckon on a pandemic, which closed all of them, and sent all of usto our couches. Disney, however, wasready for us, brilliantly illustrating the importance of management foresight and change management. Or, as Louis Pasteur said, “chance favors the prepared mind.
A century after its founding in 1923, Disney is in the middle of a bold shift from its legacy media networks & entertainment model—with cable TV, theme parks, and theater films dominating its earnings—to a direct-to-consumer streaming media model. The keys to Disney’s transition: matchless storytelling, coupled with financial strength. The company reliably creates content that people all over the world are eager to consume. It also hastened spending on original content to attract subscribers to its new streaming platform. These factors have allowed Disney to weather the pandemic having expanded its direct engagement with customers. Such connections yield a rich harvest of insights used to customize offerings on a mass scale, reinforcing that engagement in a virtuous circle and thereby raising the lifetime value of each customer. Subscribers to Disney+ reached 86.8 million one year after launch, compared to the 60 – 90 million management projected to reach in 2024. To be sure, Netflix, Apple, and Amazon remain formidable competitors in new-era streaming entertainment (mind what we said about everyone standing up at once), but there’s fight left in this old dog.”
