Disney’s Proxy Fight Heats Up (Again)

Now, Disney has new allies as the fight against Nelson Peltz gathers steam 

BREAKING NEWS

Disney’s proxy fight for the year is about to get a lot more contentious as the company announced new deals with Value Act and Blackwells Capitol to head off a renewed effort made by Nelson Peltz to generate board changes at the company. 

WHAT HAPPENED

Every major EV player releases their production and delivery metrics on the first trading day of the quarter, and there’s been quite a bit of fallout. 

First up: Tesla beat expectations by delivering 485,000 vehicles in Q4. That didn’t beat expectations hard enough and the stock is selling off with the rest of the market. 

BYD was only 2,000 vehicles behind Tesla in Q3, and now they’ve managed to deliver 526,000 vehicles in Q4. That’s a massive jump and a resounding 41,000 car lead, but BYD is caught in a much bigger selloff than Tesla because the market cares more about margins here. 

OTHER OUTLIERS

At almost the exact same time, Disney released a statement that Blackwells Captial will also nominate 3 board members at their upcoming shareholder meeting. This is a direct counter to the two board seats that Peltz is trying to secure for himself. Peltz wants full control of the cost-cutting & CEO succession plan in order to better guide Disney into the future. Bob Iger and allies want to stay the current course and control the process their way.

WHY IT MATTERS

This is ramping up to be one of the biggest shareholder fights of the year. Disney has a lot of questions to answer as the streaming wars reach a fever pitch and their content strategy languishes. For now, investors don’t really know how to feel about this as both sides feel pretty equally weighted, so Disney stock stayed flat in early trading.