[ SECRET POST #4968 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4968 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 20 secrets from Secret Submission Post #711.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

They are incredibly desperate, and anyone who they would care about knowing it, already knows it. You don't have your recently-retired CEO come back and take over operational direction of the company from his handpicked successor if you're not desperate.

(It actually doesn't make sense to me why they're as desperate as they are, since they're obviously taking a huge financial hit from coronavirus but they also have huge cash reserves and easy access to credit that should allow them to weather the storm basically indefinitely, and the lost opportunity cost of using those resources to maintain their position seems like it's counterbalanced by the fact that their competitors are going to be equally affected, but I also don't have to worry about shareholders and stock value, and they do)

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT - Yeah, my issue is, if they are desperate, why? I think this is one of those aspects of business I just don't get. But also, I don't really have any respect for the reasons they undoubtedly have. If it's basic fiscal responsibility for financially successful people to build up a safety net (which it is), then that should obviously be doubly true for successful businesses, and triply true for huge corporations.

Also, are they actually, legitimately desperate? Or are they reactively desperate because, "Oh my god, we're tripping all the alarm bells that, under normal circumstances, would mean we were doing really badly?"

[(Anonymous)]

It's complicated!

On the one hand, they absolutely do have a safety net. They have billions in cash on hand and easy access to credit. So they're not desperate in an immediate sense.

On the other hand, they're in a really interesting, complicated, tricky position. Theme parks, which are the most consistently profitable part of their business, are taking a huge hit and are likely to continue to do so for some time. Their movie business is taking a huge hit as well, and movies and their TV networks have major long-term industrywide problems. Obviously they're actively moving to web offerings to make up for that, but their web offerings aren't hugely profitable *yet*. So the parts of their business that are their moneymakers right now, and that they're relying on to drive earnings in the near term, are the hardest hit.

And on top of that, they just acquired Fox, and they just attempted to move on from Bob Iger as CEO. Acquiring Fox means they took on a bunch of long-term debt that they now have to service. And more than that, it's an investor confidence problem - they want to demonstrate that the Fox acquisition was worth it and they want to demonstrate that they have a resilient business model and that the consistent stock growth during Iger's tenure wasn't an aberration and can be maintained. So I think that drives a lot of the desperation - they really want to maintain stockholder confidence at a time where the combination of debt service and COVID effects makes that incredibly hard.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I was kind of intuiting a lot of the points you enumerated. I do appreciate you laying it out like that.

I guess I just have no patience for how stupid the machine of capitalist industry is. Like, almost no one (in the US anyway) is doing well right now, so freaking out because Disney isn't doing well, due to circumstances completely beyond their control, seems incredibly stupid. All that should really matter is whether Disney is likely to go under. If not, then ride it the fuck out. I have no respect for the way modern-day capitalism works, I guess. It has the equanimity of a pack of lemmings. For something so big to be so fragile--I feel contempt for it.

I am not in business and clearly I'd both hate it and be awful at it, lol.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree, but I also feel like companies really are just acting in their own self-interest and I don't think you can expect them to do anything different.

It's up to us as a society to put rules into place to stop it and force them to act in a way that's socially productive.

[(Anonymous)]

IMO, it might be as stupid as the tendency for rich people to hit the panic button when their financial losses make them slightly less rich. Not bankrupt. Not one paycheck away from losing their homes, cars or everything. Just... slightly less rich.

[(Anonymous)]

Right?! Like, calm down, Dave, you're not poor. You just might have to sell the yacht if you don't want to dip into your vast retirement fund.