The Walt Disney Company saw its stock dip nearly 2 percent early Thursday after billionaire Nelson Peltz sold his stake in the company following his unsuccessful proxy battle.
Disney shares rebounded after the opening bell and were up slightly in morning trading.
Peltz recently sold his position at a price of around $120 a share, which yielded a return of about $1 billion, a source told Yahoo Finance.
His decision comes after he engaged in a boardroom battle with Disney CEO Bob Iger over the direction of the once-great company.
Peltz believed Disney has lost its way and was looking to secure board seats. Specifically, he was looking to score two seats, having nominated himself and former Disney CFO Jay Rasulo. He was aiming to replace two Iger loyalists: Maria Elena Lagomasino and former Mastercard executive Michael Froman.
His efforts gained support from some institutional investors including Egan-Jones, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), and the California state pension fund CalPERS.
Egan-Jones, a credit ratings company, has been publicly critical of Disney’s entrance into what it called “the killing fields of the culture wars” — a reference to Disney’s battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over the teaching of radical LGBTQ ideology, including transgenderism, in public schools.
Disney lost that battle last month when it withdrew its lawsuit against Florida following a costly fight that saw the company lose its self-governing privileges in the Orlando area — a valuable perk Disney had enjoyed for five decades.
Under Iger and his predecessor, Bob Chapek, Disney has experienced serious financial trouble that resulted in the recent layoff of 7000 workers around the globe, as well as other forms of cost cutting that includes less streaming content.
The studio has also experienced a recent string of box-office disasters that is unprecedented in Disney history.
But stockholders apparently thought things were going just fine and voted to side with Iger.
Nelson Peltz recently revealed he is planning to back former President Donald Trump’s bid to retake the White House in November, saying that Biden has a “really scary mental condition.”
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