Disney Wins Boardroom Battle: An Exclusive Interview With CEO Bob Iger 4/4/24

David Faber (0:00)

Market Insight and Analysis. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC's Squawk on the Street.

Carl Quintanilla (0:05)

Disney and Bob Iger looking to move forward after shareholders re-elected the company's board and this defeat for activist investor Nelson Peltz. Good Thursday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber's at Disney HQ in Burbank, California. His exclusive with Iger is just moments away. In the meantime, futures solid here as treasuries find some footing in the wake of that ISM services number and Powell's comments yesterday. Ten year is back to 434 We're gonna begin that with Disney winning that boardroom battle against Nelson Peltz and looking forward very much, David, to your interview not too long from now.

David Faber (0:41)

Yeah, you know, so much to talk to Bob Iger about as there always is and I always look forward to our conversations as we've had them through the years and even more recently at a decent pace of late. You know, victory as we all know for Disney, not unexpected at least. If you've listened to my reporting through these last few weeks and months. I mean, Jim, I'll come back to you on this.

I don't know whether you were surprised at all. It was always seemingly an uphill battle for Nelson Peltz. I argued, I think in part because it was never clear beyond just saying this company needs better board oversight or more focus on its succession that there was anything he suggested in any way that hadn't already been taken up by Disney and pursued and partially already executed on.

Jim Cramer (1:26)

Well, I think it did come down to succession, David. I think that was the one thing that you could argue they did really poorly. But you know what really defeated Nelson, I think, is the stock was the best performer in the Dow.

And a lot of that may have been just Bob Iger focusing the company. You can certainly ask him, I think it'd be great. I don't know how much it was. Well, we got to focus in order to be able to keep Nelson off the board. But I think that Iger made a series of, let's say, look, he came up with some good ideas. I also feel, David, you got to ask him this, that they've got Gorman doing the succession with Parker, but Gorman's a hitter. And I think that made a lot of people feel, wait a second, we got a new guy, fresh perspective.

Let's go with this. I want to also know why did ISS go with Peltz and not with Disney? And I want to say Iger, because I never felt this was Peltz versus Iger. You may disagree with that, but I never felt it was that.

David Faber (2:19)

Yeah, well, listen, it did get fairly personal, of course, and it may have been as much Iker-Mutter and Iger that said Iger got 94 percent of the votes cast in favor of his directorship.

Peltz, as we reported yesterday, 31 percent versus some 63 percent for the director that he was targeting. So, you know, a decisive victory here for Disney, as you typically do when you prepare for an interview. I went back and read through the transcript from our interview from February of 23 I read through our interview from Sun Valley. I read through Andrew's interview with Iger from his deal book, and Julia's more recently from the first quarter numbers. I mean, Jim, one thing is that Iger did make certain promises that he's already kept in terms of cost cutting, in terms of turning certain things around. Obviously, there is a great deal yet to come.

But I also think that was in his favor as well.

Jim Cramer (3:13)

Yeah, but let's not forget, New Johnson came in. I know you from PepsiCo. The guy's money, okay? So he comes in, he basically resets what you're doing financially with Iger. Iger comes back and endorses the 7.5 bill instead of 5.5 billion in terms of cost cuts.

Is ESPN fixed? Well, that wasn't something that Nelson was even talking about.

But is there a succession plan? That I think, David, is the key thing to focus on if I were out there. And I know that you've read everything, but there still is a question, how did they go so wrong? How did that board, which we know was filled with heavyweights, go so wrong in succession? And that, David, I really need to know.

David Faber (3:54)

Well, I'm not sure you're going to get there. I mean, we're going to, you know, we'll see. We'll see what I choose to ask. That's the nice part.