Fool.com: Kid Flicks, Adult Profits [Special] May 5, 2004

This is part of The Motley Fool's annual Stocks for Mom special.

Pixar (: PIXR)
Trading at $66.87 as of 5/4/04
52-week high: $75.15
52-week low: $50.79

Mom, while just two of your eight dazzling grandchildren were my handiwork, they all have a funny way of behaving like little angels at your home the moment you pop a Pixar(Nasdaq: PIXR) disc into the DVD player.

Yes, I realize this might feel like a cruel Mother's Day trick. In the company's last release, the highest-grossing animated feature of all time, Nemo's mom lasts for all of the film's first few tear-jerking moments. But, hey, Andy's mom in Toy Story sure seems resiliently swell!

Beyond Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Pixar's other theatrical releases include A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo. In a "hit or miss" Hollywood, Pixar's gone five for five. Pixar's films have averaged a whopping $239 million and that's just at the domestic box office. Scoring riches overseas along with the eventual home video releases and lucrative merchandising opportunities, Pixar's a money machine. The one overhang on the company was that -- no matter how well it did -- Disney(: DIS) always came around to take half of the profits.

While the Mickey Mouse company clearly played a part in helping the computer animation specialist break into the industry, going by Disney's recent wave of inked multiplex duds, one can reason that Disney's distribution was more the work of powdered sugar than pixie dust.

Pixar has beaten Wall Street's estimates rather consistently. The company earned $2.17 a share last year on $262.5 million in revenues, and one has to wonder how meatier its financials will look in two years once Pixar breaks free from having to split the loot with Disney.

Does that mean that the studio's profit levels can double in three years? Perhaps. But even more tantalizing is the notion that with every film an independent Pixar releases, it just tosses more marketable characters into the company's vault of exponentially lucrative marketing opportunities.  

Like the Disney of yesterday -- or the Marvel(NYSE: MVL) of today -- Pixar's packing the content candy that everybody wants. It's why the stock was such an easy recommendation to make in our overachieving Motley Fool Stock Advisor newsletter. Well, that and sporting 48% net profit margins is like being a hottie and having a killer personality.

Maybe that's why Disney's rival studios -- everyone from Time Warner(NYSE: TWX) to Sony(NYSE: SNE) -- have been lining up with offers to distribute Pixar's future productions without biting into the popular studio's profits.

Quality counts! At least, that's what I say every time I come over for one of your amazing dinners, Mom. So, yes, Pixar is indeed five for five, but it's got nothing on you, Mom. Look at those smiling grandchildren. You're eight for eight!

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Aristotle Munarriz -- and his mother -- do, in fact, own all five of Pixar's flicks (and Fliks) on DVD. His devotion to Pixar is sincere. He owns stock in the company -- as well as Disney. Rick's other stock holdings can be viewed online, as can the Fool's disclosure policy. 

A Stock for Mom represents the opinion of one Fool and should in no way be taken as the opinion of either The Motley Fool, Inc. or the company in question, or as representative of anyone or anything other than that specific Fool's thoughts.