Walt Disney (DIS 0.22%) is a company that needs no introduction, but it might surprise you to learn that despite the faster-than-expected vaccine rollout and reopening progress, its stock has taken a beating lately and is now about 15% off the highs. In this Fool Live video clip, recorded on May 14, chief growth officer Anand Chokkavelu gives a rundown of why Disney could emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic an even stronger company than it went in.
Anand Chokkavelu: Next up is one many people might predict, it's Disney. Everyone knows Disney so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it. I'm not going to give the entire list of its amazing franchises and properties that basically make it a buy-anytime stock, at least for me, but Disney is particularly interesting now, it's a day after some relatively disappointing earnings. Last time I checked, the stock was down, maybe that's changed in the last couple hours but subscriber growth was the big reason. It's still got to 103.6 million subscribers. Same reopening headwinds that Netflix saw in its earnings. It's not something that's specific to Disney. A bigger-picture, if we step back, missing subscribers by a few million a couple of months after it announced 100 million, not a big deal. It's way ahead of schedule on Disney+. It's only a year-and-a-half old, and it's gotten a half Netflix's size. Remember what their initial game plan was, their goal was to get to 60-90 million subs by 2024, it's way past that now in 2021. Two or three years ahead of schedule, or really three years ahead of schedule on hitting that 60 million. You also have to remember that Disney plus had a tailwind because of the pandemic, other parts of the businesses had headwinds. Reopening will help theme parks, movie studio, cruises, etc. Disney will soon be running on all cylinders again. I consider one of my safer stocks. Back when I run stock through my stoplight framework, one of the questions I asked is "confidence level in my assessment." The highest grade a Company can get is "Disney-level confident." So, Disney.
