1. The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 144
Topping the 10 best summer stocks list to buy now is American entertainment giant The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS). When it comes to the best summer stocks to invest in, Disney is perhaps one of the most popular companies with pent-up demand, as the company’s theme parks and resorts in California recently reopened. On top of that, The Walt Disney Company is also making a dent in the streaming industry with its booming Disney+ video streaming business. Since its launch in 2019, Disney+ has already surpassed 100 million subscribers. According to Disney, its streaming service user base will be between 230 million and 260 million by 2024.
The company has a market cap of over $335 billion. The Walt Disney Company’s revenue came in at $16.2 billion in the first quarter of 2021. The stock has gained 69% in the last twelve months. Wells Fargo maintained an Overweight position in Walt Disney and raised its price target to $219 on April 20.
There were 144 hedge funds that reported owning stakes in The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) at the end of the fourth quarter, up from 112 funds a quarter earlier. The total value of these stakes at the end of Q4 is $16.4 billion.
New Jersey-based investment management firm Harding Loevner Lp said that The Walt Disney Company strengthened its direct customer engagement, which helped the company harvest a substantial return of insights used to customize offerings on a large scale in its Q4 2020 investor letter:
“One of the original constituents of the Nifty Fifty holds a place in our portfolio today. When we bought Disney three years ago, we wrote that ‘we view Disney theme parks in the US, Europe, and China as resistant to online substitution.’ We did not reckon on a pandemic, which closed all of them, and sent us to our couches. Disney, however, was ready for us, brilliantly illustrating the importance of management foresight and change management. Or, as Louis Pasteur said, “chance favors the prepared mind.”
A century after its founding in 1923, Disney is in the middle of a bold shift from its legacy media networks & entertainment model—with cable TV, theme parks, and theater films dominating its earnings—to a direct-to-consumer streaming media model. The keys to Disney’s transition: matchless storytelling, coupled with financial strength. The company reliably creates content that people all over the world are eager to consume. It also hastened spending on original content to attract subscribers to its new streaming platform. These factors have allowed Disney to weather the pandemic, having expanded its direct engagement with customers. Such connections yield a rich harvest of insights used to customize offerings on a mass scale, reinforcing that engagement in a virtuous circle and thereby raising the lifetime value of each customer. Subscribers to Disney+ reached 86.8 million one year after launch, compared to the 60 – 90 million management projected to reach in 2024. To be sure, Netflix, Apple, and Amazon remain formidable competitors in new-era streaming entertainment (mind what we said about everyone standing up at once), but there’s fight left in this old dog.”
Copyright: blanscape / 123RF Stock Photo
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