If You'd Put $1,000 Into Disney Stock 20 Years Ago, Here's What You'd Have Today

Shareholders in Walt Disney (DIS) probably wish they were celebrating the media and entertainment conglomerate's 100th anniversary under happier circumstances. Although Wall Street continues to be bullish on the name, the past couple of years have been brutally tough on this bluest of blue chip stocks.

Everyone remembers how the pandemic clobbered Disney, whose theme parks and film businesses were especially exposed to COVID-19. Dividend investors certainly recall that the company suspended its payout in the early months of the outbreak in order to conserve cash, and that the dividend remains on hiatus to this day.

Perhaps fewer remember how DIS stock more than doubled between March 2020 and March 2021, when shares hit an all-time high as a pandemic recovery play. At the top, Disney boasted a market capitalization of more than $366 billion. 

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What Disney shareholders would probably like to forget is that DIS stock has cratered since then.

Indeed, DIS stock has lost 60% of its value since its peak, shedding roughly $220 billion in market cap in the process. To put such a sum in context, $220 billion is more than the entire market values of Dow stocks McDonald's (MCD) or Salesforce (CRM). 

DIS was one of the 30 best stocks in the world over the three decades ended 2020, so what happened?

The rise of streaming, cord cutting and other industry changes over the past couple of years have Disney facing existential questions. If CEO Bob Iger's first tenure with the company was all about acquiring assets and making Disney bigger, his sequel run as top exec is all about making Disney smaller. Selling the ABC network – and figuring out what to do with ESPN and Hulu – are just two of Iger's more pressing "strategic initiatives." 

The bottom line on Disney stock

As noted above, Disney was one of the best stocks in the world over the three decades between 1990 and 2020. Mostly, though, it's been a dud. While it's true that you can manipulate historical returns by fussing with their beginning and end points, Disney's record vs the broader market over pretty much any standardized period you care to measure is poor.

For its entire history as a publicly traded company, Disney stock generated a total return (price change plus dividends) of 8.2% annualized. That trails the S&P 500's annualized total return of 9.8% over the same time span. DIS stock also lags the performance of the broader market over the past 20-, 15-, 10-, five-, three- and one-year periods. 

Have a look at the above chart and you'll see that if you put $1,000 into Disney stock 20 years ago, today it would be worth $4,527. The same amount invested in the S&P 500 would theoretically be worth $5,968 today. 

As disappointing as Disney stock has been for buy-and-hold investors, analysts like its chances of beating the market over the next 12 to 18 months. Of the 33 analysts issuing opinions on DIS stock surveyed by S&P Global Market Intelligence, 21 rate it at Strong Buy, four say Buy, six have it at Hold and two call it a Strong Sell. That works out to a consensus recommendation of Buy, with high conviction. 

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