If you're in your 50s, you probably have a lot of life left to live. Your life, and by extension your investment horizon, may span another 30, 40, or even 50 years. So it's vital to include a growth aspect to your portfolio -- one that will help keep pace with inflation and grow your purchasing power over time.
Yet you've also worked hard for your money. You've spent decades working to amass your fortune, and you don't want to lose it by speculating on high-risk investments.
So what you, and many 50-year-old investors like you, are probably searching for is a stock that possesses a perfect blend of growth and safety. And out of all the businesses I follow, none offers a better combination of these attributes than The Walt Disney Company (DIS -1.01%).
Disney's strength comes from the diversity of its operations, which span across theme parks, resorts, movie studios, and cable networks, as well as a powerful consumer-products licensing division. Each segment of this vast entertainment empire serves to strengthen the others, making the whole far more powerful than the sum of the parts. For example, a blockbuster new movie can not only power results in Disney's studio entertainment division, but can also drive demand for Disney licensed consumer products such as toys, games, and books. It can also spawn new TV shows and create more excitement and traffic at Disney's theme parks and resorts.
Disney's diversity also helps to provide a degree of safety; weakness in one area of its business can often be offset by strength in another. For instance, recent sluggish results in Disney's ESPN franchise were more than offset by the strong performance of its parks and resorts, studio entertainment, and consumer-products segments.
In addition, Disney's diversified collection of businesses gives management the opportunity to invest across a broad area of the entertainment industry, thereby giving it more options to effectively allocate capital to high-return investments.
One area where Disney is investing aggressively is its new mega-theme park in China. Disney Shanghai is scheduled to open in early 2016 and estimates for first-year attendance reach as high as 25 million visitors, which would make it the most-visited theme park in the world.
Source: Disney.
Incredibly, Disney Shanghai is just one exciting growth catalyst for this entertainment titan. The company has a well-stocked pipeline of likely to-be blockbuster movies, including what could be the highest-grossing movie of all time in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, due out in December. The movie will also help spawn multiple Star Wars films in the years ahead, and along with upcoming films from Marvel and Pixar, should only help to add fuel to the fire that is the Disney marketing machine.
Source: Disney.
With a powerful collection of businesses that all serve to reinforce each other and an exciting slate of growth catalysts set to power results for many years to come, Disney looks set to enjoy a magical future. If you're in your 50s and searching for a stock than can provide an excellent combination of growth and safety for your portfolio, Disney may be just what you've been seeking.
