Nelson Peltz’s Disney consolation prize: A $300 million gain
Trian Partners lost its bid for board seats, but profited on its investment.
Nelson Peltz may have suffered a bruising defeat in his proxy battle with Disney Wednesday, but the sting could be eased by a gain the activist has scored on the investment.
Peltz’s Trian Partners has made around $300 million in profit on its 16-month investment, most of it on paper, according to people familiar with the matter.
The firm invested around $800 million in Disney in 2022, buying much of its stake when shares were around $88 apiece. That isn’t far from the recent bottom in the stock, which closed Wednesday at $118.98.
Trian launched its first proxy fight then backed off early last year, selling about a third of its stake and locking in around $60 million of profit.
This time around, Peltz’s friend Ike Perlmutter, the former Marvel Entertainment chairman and one of Disney’s biggest shareholders, entrusted Trian with the voting rights of his Disney shares.
Trian’s arrangement with Perlmutter gives it a cut—around 10%—of the gain on his shares, the people said, which hasn’t been previously reported. Perlmutter got his big stake when he sold Marvel to Disney for $4 billion in 2009. The stake has risen in value by roughly $850 million, adding another $85 million or so to Trian’s haul.
After subtracting the $25 million Trian expected to spend waging the campaign, the firm’s profit to date comes out to about $300 million.
That is a roughly 40% return on the investment over the period Trian has owned the shares, which is about equal to the S&P 500’s return over the same period.
Trian’s profit isn’t huge compared with its assets under management of around $10 billion, a figure which included more than $2 billion of Perlmutter’s Disney shares. But the Disney investment is helping improve returns at Trian after years of underperformance in its main fund.
Trian had aimed to get two seats on Disney’s board, arguing the company needed to move faster to reinvent itself and find a successor to Chief Executive Bob Iger.
Peltz, speaking at Disney’s annual meeting Wednesday, noted the stock had performed well after Disney launched several initiatives following Trian’s arrival. He said the firm plans to continue monitoring progress.
“We hope that this time will be our last and that shareholders will not be let down like a year ago," he said.
Robbie Whelan and Lauren Thomas contributed to this article.
Write to Cara Lombardo at cara.lombardo@wsj.com
