Disney's Streaming Business Valued North of $100 Billion, Per Barclays Analyst

Investors put the value of the recently launched Disney+, as well as Hulu and ESPN+, at around $108 billion, says Kannan Venkateshwar.

Walt Disney's direct-to-consumer streaming business, including the recently launched Disney+ as well as Hulu and ESPN+, is being valued by the stock market at more than $100 billion, Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar estimates.

The Barclays analyst in a Monday report estimated the enterprise value of Disney’s core business, including its movie, networks and theme parks operations, at approximately $213 billion, with the direct-to-consumer operations worth nearly $108 billion. That would be worth about 69 percent of Netflix’s enterprise value,

Venkateshwar argued that this shows investors have confidence in the streaming strategy of the entertainment giant, led by chairman and CEO Bob Iger.

"Multi-year investment cycles with limited visibility need a narrative to align investors with management goals," the Barclays analyst wrote in another report Tuesday. "This is something that Disney has done a great job of over the course of 2019 and has in turn given the company more degrees of freedom to invest aggressively in its streaming efforts."

LightShed analyst Richard Greenfield, meanwhile, on Monday estimated that Disney+ alone closed out the year strongly. "We would not be surprised to see Disney+ end 2019 with 25 million subscribers," he wrote in a report.

Shares of Disney on Monday closed at $145.65, giving it a market cap of around $260 billion.