Beyond Star Wars And Avengers: Why Disney Stock Is A Buy

Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) is the world’s largest media and entertainment company. From major media names like ESPN, to theme parks around the world, to its world-renowned films, Disney is handling business on a massive scale. The $184 billion market cap is evidence of Disney’s massive impact on global media and entertainment.

We will take a look at some upcoming films which are expected to have a significant impact on Disney’s bottom line in the future. These include the releases of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Frozen 2, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. We will also be outlining and evaluating major financial stats and ratios in order to come to an understanding of where Disney stands, and where it’s headed. First, though, it is important to inspect some of the films which will have a major impact on Disney’s future earnings reports.

In 2012, The Avengers grossed over $1.5 billion worldwide. There is a lot of anticipation among audiences for Avengers: Age of Ultron, which comes out on the first of this May. Many are speculating, and the consensus seems to be that the film will be competing with the results of the last Avengers film from 2012.

In late March, It became known that Frozen, the top-grossing animated film of all time, will have a sequel. Though there is no release date yet for Frozen 2, many DIS stockholders can’t seem to wait. This isn’t surprising, especially when you consider the fact that Frozen raked in $1.219 billion dollars at the box office.

Recently, Disney released a trailer for the new Star Wars film, called Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Fans seeing the trailer for the first time experienced a wide range of emotions, anywhere from laughter to tears of joy. Indeed, the Star Wars franchise has a massive fan base, spanning across multiple generations.

Up to this point, total revenues have exceeded $27 billion for Star Wars, according to statisticbrain.com. The majority of these revenues come from box office, DVD, and toys sales. Fans have been hankering for a new film for about a decade, and the anticipation for this movie can’t be overstated.

Now that we’ve covered what’s to come for Disney films, it’s time to evaluate the company as a whole based on fundamental value and growth metrics. The company holds a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). It’s worth noting that the company has a nice PEG of 2.08. This helps to offset the fact that the stock currently trades at a PE of 21.69.

Disney has debt/capital of 0.2. Current cash flow growth is 18.53%. These stats help show that Disney is a company in good financial standing in terms of having liabilities under control as well as in being able to increase its liquidity. Disney has a net margin of 15.72%.

Next, we will highlight some earnings stats in order to evaluate where Disney stands and where estimates suggest it’s headed. There have been 10 analysts revising their earnings estimates for the current quarter upwards in the last 60 days. In that same time frame, no analysts have revised their estimates for the current quarter down.

7 days ago, our earnings consensus estimated EPS of $1.10 for this quarter. Since then, our consensus has been revised, now estimating earnings of $1.11 for the quarter. Disney has beaten our earnings consensus in each of the last four quarters, and by an average of 10.64%. After surprising last quarter by a margin of 17.59%, Disney stock surged over 9% over the next two trading sessions. Since its last earnings report, Disney stock has climbed 14.5% higher. DIS reports its earnings on 5/5/15.

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