5 Best Media Stocks To Buy Now

4. The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 112

The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) is one of the world’s leading providers of entertainment and media. The company bought Marvel Entertainment in 2009, in a deal worth $4 billion, which helped the company launch new shows on Disney+ based on Marvel characters. Along with this, The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) also operates other online streaming services such as Hulu and ESPN+.

At the end of Q2, 112 hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey reported owning stakes in The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS), down from 134 in the previous quarter. The total value of these stakes is over $10.8 billion.

Harding Loevner mentioned The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) in its Q4 2020 investor letter. Here is what the firm has to say:

“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.”