Nelson Peltz cashed out his shares of Disney shortly after the activist investor lost his bid to win seats on the Mouse House’s board, according to a CNBC report Wednesday.
Peltz sold all of his Disney stock at “close to $120 dollars a share,” making about $1 billion on the sale, CNBC reported, citing an anonymous source. That would indicate that Peltz sold the shares in the days immediately after the April 3 Disney shareholder meeting — where his bid to shake up Disney’s board was soundly defeated.
A rep for Trian Partners, the hedge fund headed by Peltz, declined to comment. Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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At the April 3 virtual meeting of Disney shareholders, investors voted to reelect the current 12-member board of directors by a substantial margin over the candidates nominated by Trian — Peltz himself and ex-Disney CFO Jay Rasulo — and a smaller investment firm, Blackwells Capital.
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Peltz, in an appearance on CNBC April 4, had threatened to resume his activist agenda at Disney if the company and CEO Bob Iger did not keep their “promises.”
“I hope this is not a redo of last year where we pulled out, gave management a chance and the stock went down,” Peltz said in the CNBC interview. He added, “Whether we stay [invested in Disney] or not, we don’t make those kinds of announcements.”
Peltz’s Trian had at one time controlled 32.3 million shares of Disney, including about 30 million owned by former Marvel Entertainment head Ike Perlmutter. (Disney alleged Perlmutter harbored a longstanding personal vendetta against Iger.) At the end of 2023, Trian’s stake represented 1.8% of Disney’s outstanding shares.
In his proxy fight, one of Peltz’s biggest complaints was his allegation that Disney’s board failed to do its job with CEO succession planning in not vetting former parks boss Bob Chapek, who was Iger’s personal pick to take over the job in 2020. “They all took Bob’s word, and they voted Chapek in. That’s not what the responsibility of a director is,” Peltz said in the CNBC interview last month. The board ousted Chapek in November 2022 and brought Iger back on as CEO.
In an appearance earlier on CNBC on April 4, Iger reiterated that the Disney board’s top priority is the CEO succession and he said “they’re treating it with urgency.” He also said Disney’s long-term goal is to hit double-digit margins in the streaming business, which was another key point in Trian’s proxy campaign.