The billionaire investor may have been unceremoniously booted from Disney’s kingdom after a fierce proxy battle this week. But in a pugnacious interview a day after the dejecting defeat, the lord of the Trian Fund fief revealed his quest lined his company’s coffers with over $1 billion in royally lucrative stock profits.
When the dust settled from Wednesday’s fractious shareholder showdown, preliminary tallies showed only around 31% of Disney’s vassals favored seating Peltz and an erstwhile executive on the Magic Kingdom’s court. But while repudiating his power play to reshape the realm, the resurgent rulers’ minions swelled the value of Trian’s $900 million Disney stake by over a billion dollars.
“The shareholders have voted,” the embattled baron gruffly told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Thursday. “They want to give management and the board a chance. So be it.”
Yet despite the royal rebuff, Peltz’s plump payday seemed to placate the warlord’s ire – for now. “I hope they can do all the things they assured us they were going to do,” he said of Disney’s reigning monarchs. “And we’ll only watch and wait.”
The dollar deluge delivered Disney’s detractor a sizable salve after months of bitter broadsides between the feuding factions. Trian and its allied insurgents, including the defrocked Marvel chieftain Ike Perlmutter, tried storming Disney’s citadels by force this winter, demanding fresh blood and perspective on the board.
Their escalating indictments painted the Magic Kingdom as an indulgent, overstaffed empire in dire need of austerity and refocused stewardship. From profligate production mills to hapless streaming misadventures, the ultra-wealthy usurpers accused Disney’s nobility of royal mismanagement.
But the scathing campaign irked many of Disney’s entrenched investor vassals. They saw the interlopers as simply spoiling for a corporate fracture or fire sale. It also nettled the sovereignty’s reinstated CEO Bob Iger, who led a rousing defense to preserve his regime’s power.
For all the blustery bombast and slings traded across Disney’s moats, however, it was ultimately stock market serfs who decided the kingdom’s fate.
And a decisive majority appeared to heed Iger’s cries that Disney’s ranks were already diligently downsizing and rethinking streaming under his renewed rule. Only a small slice sided with supplanting any leadership too soon after his return.
Yet despite driving away the insurrectionists, the shareholder clash ironically turbocharged the very revival Peltz accused Disney of fumbling before his bear hug.
Trian started accruing its Disney stake last year as the company’s downtrodden share prices languished. But Disney has rocketed over 35% higher so far in 2024, thrilling investors with deeper costcuts and a more prudent streaming roadmap.
The meteoric stock rise grotesquely enriched the hedge fund hordes who challenged the incumbent dynasty. When Cramer wondered if Trian reaped a $300 million windfall on its Disney gambit, the warlord recoiled, calling the estimate “dramatically wrong.”
After the host inquired whether $1 billion better approximated the actual kingdom Trian plundered from its Magic Kingdom offensive, Peltz growled: “That sounds more like it.”
So while turned away from Disney’s court, the pretender’s coffers now groan with treasure arguably vaster than anything the conflict’s victor possesses.
That golden bounty could seed new bids to seize other empires…or simply buy Peltz time to plot another frontal attack on Mickey’s ramparts down the road.
“If they do it, they won’t hear from me again,” the billionaire buccaneer told Cramer. But, he menacingly added, “if they don’t, you’ll see me again.”
