The business side of the House of Mickey

As you can tell from most of the links on the right side of the blog, I subscribe to a lot of other blogs about the Mouse, its current happenings and in many cases its past.

I am an avid reader in general and read just about anything I can get my hands on about the Disney company past and current.  From Michael Barrier and Bob Thomas's excellent biographies to some of the more recent books like Disney War.  Each paints a little different facet of the company.

So in the interest of not blogging generally about things that most of the other guys are covering just fine, and since I hope to someday be employed by the Company itself, I think I'm going to hew towards the business side of things as much as I can. 

I have no inside information or informants (believe me, if I did I wouldn't have taken up this blog to try and find/chronicle my way into the company), so we'll rely mostly on what's in the free press, books, etc.  Nothing any company does, the Mouse included, happens in a vacuum however.  Everything has its purpose and its time, even if its bad timing.

On Friday, June 8th for instance, in the broader sell off that was the worst trading day to date this calendar year, saw Disney down about 4 1/3 percent in one day.  Obviously the high price of oil is starting to weigh heavily on investor confidence in the tourism industry (among others).  What may bode poorly for the parks and resorts group might be offset slightly by more people going to summer movies closer to home instead of trekking to Florida or California for vacations.  I doubt the margins in the movie business are as good as they are in the parks, so like most I think I'd still expect some flat earnings coming up.

Florida for instance seems to have been more than making up for surely declining domestic bookings with increased foreign travelers since the dollar is in such bad shape against almost all foreign currencies.  That's bad for you and me, but keeps Disney going.

California on the other hand appears to not have quite the international draw that Florida does, despite the 30-40% currency discount.  It also is in a much tougher geographic location since all the closest airports are smaller and just the size of ones that the big airlines are leaving in droves at the moment. 

I know many sites have lots to say about delays at the makeover for DCA, but to me it has to be an inherently fiscal one at this point.  Bob Weis and his crew have surely figured out how to start to crack the nut that is DCA. 

Walt probably would have gone by now but he had the spirit and the drive of an entrepreneur, which is much different than the spirit and drive of a current minded businessman.  Disney is a mature business after all, and hardly in major growth mode like a much smaller organization.

But given that nobody knows where the economy is going, and P&R is posting 20% plus gains with the product mix today, would you put a billion on the table?