Apple should buy Disney which would create a technology and entertainment juggernaut unlike anything the world has ever seen, according to Needham analyst Laura Martin.
In a research report, Martin said with Apple having 1.25B “unique consumers” using its products and services, and the 570M consumers that Disney reaches every year tie up, the company’s “are worth more together than separately.”
Martin said that Apple and Disney are “complementary” due to each company having particular strengths that could become stronger together. For Apple, that would be how it distributes content to its customers, as witnessed not only by its 1.25B “unique and wealthy users”, but the 2B iPhones and iPads that those customers owned. Meanwhile, Martin said that what Disney does best is create well-known content franchises which it is able to distribute on digital screens globally, “as well as in the physical world.”
Disney has a market cap of about $178B. Add on a premium that would be included with and purchase and it’s safe to say that Apple could easily pay more than $200B to bring the Disney empire under its watch.
“Defensively, content beats technology as a multi-decade moat,” Martin said, adding that bundling Disney’s products with those of Apple would make Apple shareholders happy by potentially giving a 25% boost to Apple’s market value.
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, this is not a new idea. It’s been bandied about for years.
In December 2021, Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC’s David Faber that while he never spoke with Steve Jobs about a potential merger of Apple and Disney, but he believes the deal likely would have “gotten there” had Jobs lived longer.
As we wrote back in March 2020:
Well, now, such an acquisition would certainly jibe with some whispers we’d heard [in November 2019] prior to the coronavirus outbreak of a major Apple acquisition possibly being in the works.
Such an acquisition would of course be quite an undertaking as Apple would have to bring the parts of Disney that are unique (think theme parks) into the fold (or keep them as an Apple subsidiary). On the positive side, Apple TV+ would immediately become a massive streaming entity as Disney+ content rolled into Apple’s streaming service would be an instant juggernaut.
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I have found this merger quite interesting for years. But I feel the DOJ and FTC would not allow this to occur.
A number of commentators here would be driven to a mental breakdown as they wandered around saying “Woke! Woke! They’re so WOKE!. Woke…. I’m told that’s a bad thing… No, I mean it is bad. Woke! Woke!…(drool)”
Disney goes WOKE, then it goes BROKE!. So they try to sell for Apple, that’s very smartass strategy Disney.
Woke? We only say that about you, Humdumb Loon
There are many things you all assume about me which is interesting because most of those thoughts are wrong.
Disney, as currently constituted, may not be attractive to AAPL.
A good time to do this was when Jobs sold Pixar to Disney (2006, but it was too big and not as great fit yet), and the right time was before Apple TV+ and Disney+ were released (2019). A few years before. They could have merged instead of Apple creating their own content, and instead of Disney building their own tech platform. But those savings are gone now. Of course it’s still possible, but it doesn’t make as much sense anymore: Apple already has high quality content, could raise the price as much as Disney is worth? Or add enough new subs? Apple subs are overlapping, and many use Apple because of other services. Sure, Disney has a lot of other businesses also, but are those a good fit for Apple anyway? Not that easy calculation. If they didn’t think it made sense it back then, I don’t know why it would make more sense today.
This was pretty much what I stated here right after Pixar was ‘handed over’ to Disney.
One of the few times Jobs (to me) didn’t see the long road, or if he did was looking for a different destination.
Before the return of Steve Jobs, when Apple was struggling, many pundits were saying Disney should buy Apple!
Disney is a hot mess. Why on earth would apple want to take on such a debacle as the Disney corporation. Theme parks, cruise ships, hyper competitive streaming service. Disney is no longer able to create classic good content. Disney stock is down 40% off high and the stock is still way over priced with P/E ratio of 55. Disney properties and assets are maybe worth 100 billion but at the current price Apple buying Disney is delusional.