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Mysterious Companies Buying Everything Up

Zack Birlew

Zack Birlew

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Anybody notice that there's a lot of companies we've never heard of buying up known brands and entities left and right lately? What is this and should we be worried?

I first noticed this coming up in the videogame sphere as various IP properties started being bought, sold, and swapped around to new companies that I still have yet to get a hold on for remembering who owns what. Now we have things like Avid being acquired and I've never heard of STG let alone what they could have possibly made or done to have more than $1.4 billion to acquire a company like Avid.

Now Google, Apple, or Microsoft coming in to buy something up is one thing and it is annoying that it's often just a patent grab that disappears into the vault like the ending of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" but at least we know where and with whom those properties and companies are with. Like I said, some of these situations seem to turn into a shell game between these mystery groups so those purchases seem to be ending up in limbo unless they can be tracked down and at most they're oddly left dormant.

Then there are cases that make headlines like Embracer Group, apparently a former game company that somehow keeps rising from bankruptcy and insolvency to be restructured and rebranded, that just swoops in and make all kinds of acquisitions and then is seemingly potentially imploding shortly afterward due to a $2 billion dollar business deal disappearing. Last I checked, IP and companies aren't trading cards or trophy pieces so what's going on here?
 
Welcome to the world of private equity
 
It's a law of nature. But it's also cyclical.

The way Disney is going, to take Brian's point further, it was inevitable that they would have to sell off some of their IP. They got too big (which is not the same thing as being profitable). Which for them made sense because nobody cares about Disney's original IP. They can't make anything anymore, just like most of Hollywood, so they have to buy it. And they bought too much stuff, some of which was not compatible with their ethos. People naively thought that when Disney bought Lucasfilm that they would have a licence to print money. How wrong they were.

There are several groups which own multiple luxury brands, like Coach, Jimmy Choo, etc. GM is made up of once independent manufacturers. Same with Ford. Etc.
 
Just to underline something, though it doesn't tell the whole story as there are other variables at play. But Disney's acquisition of both Marvel and Lucasfilm has produced earnings in the +240% (currently) range prior to owning either of those IP driven studios. Streaming revenue as well as the growth of that aspect of the industry also accounts for a big chunk of that as well.

And Disney got a hell of a deal for Lucasfilm, probably 20-25% what it should have sold for, but Lucas interestingly wasn't after the biggest check. He chose the one that felt just right, which at the time was a choice between 5-7 potential buyers.
 
Phil Holland said:
Just to underline something, though it doesn't tell the whole story as there are other variables at play. But Disney's acquisition of both Marvel and Lucasfilm has produced earnings in the +240% (currently) range prior to owning either of those IP driven studios. Streaming revenue as well as the growth of that aspect of the industry also accounts for a big chunk of that as well..
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I'd argue that Marvel and Lucasfilm have not been profitable in the last year or two. Look at the money lost by Indiana Jones & The Dud of Destiny, or the fact that six episodes of Secret Invasion cost $212 million dollars?

How Did Secret Invasion Possibly Cost $212M, Way More Than Box Office Hits Like Barbie and Oppenheimer?
https://tvline.com/news/secret-invas...ia-1235025084/

It's a good question as to whether Disney might seek to sell off some of their divisions in order to raise the billions of dollars they've lost in the last couple of years. It's already being whispered that they might unload Fox, if not Lucasilm and even Marvel and sell them to Apple for a massive pricetag:

Analysts won’t stop suggesting that Apple is buying Disney
https://9to5mac.com/2023/08/10/apple...buying-disney/

If Apple is currently worth about $2.78 trillion dollars, and all of Disney is worth $162 billion, I bet Apple could easily afford to spend $100 billion wthout even feeling it. Disney could keep all their theme parks and their animation and their core library, so they'd still "be Disney" for all practical purposes. A lot depends on what business Apple thinks they're in at the moment.

It's fair to say there's a lot of weirdness going on here in Hollywoo at the moment.
 
Marc Wielage said:
If Apple is currently worth about $2.78 trillion dollars, and all of Disney is worth $162 billion, I bet Apple could easily afford to spend $100 billion wthout even feeling it. Disney could keep all their theme parks and their animation and their core library, so they'd still "be Disney" for all practical purposes. A lot depends on what business Apple thinks they're in at the moment.

It's fair to say there's a lot of weirdness going on here in Hollywoo at the moment.
Click to expand...

If someone could give Lucasfilm, Marvel, Muppets, ABC, ESPN, Pixar among others a decent home that would be nice.

If Disney keeps the theme parks, cruise lines, and their original IP (maybe sans Tron) it would be all good in the universe.

On another note, Steve Jobs would show a special kind of genius in the afterlife if he made money selling Pixar to Disney
and was the catalyst for Disney buying Star Wars only to have Apple buy them both.

I agree about the weirdness going on in Hollywood and ostensibly the greater economic landscape.
AI makes the uncertainty that much weirder.

Who knows, maybe the $ might officially go belly up and we're "saved" by a new digital based currency
with a questionable amount of control mechanisms most couldn't imagine.....but that's too far fetched right???

Sorry if this seems to go into a rat hole but I do think all of this is ultimately connected to the original post (minus the Disney IP talk ... or is it?).

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA
 
Brian Timmons said:
Sorry if this seems to go into a rat hole but I do think all of this is ultimately connected to the original post (minus the Disney IP talk ... or is it?).

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA
Click to expand...

It may very well be, I wonder about Disney and all of its collected IP as well, it shows that the traditional way we think of utilizing IP makes having all of it set at one company completely unaffordable and ultimately unmanageable just by the sheer size of it.
 
The latest merger of PGA with LIV golf may be a sign of the times. There's a great deal of middle eastern oil money becoming involved in many venues like golf and formula 1. I have to wonder how many other venues are being bought up by ghost companies.
 
Yes, I'm finding potential investors for Babs Do Studios can be names I've heard of on the news or business magazines or are directly connected to the bigger names but then there's just so many that nobody seems to know anything about but most research shows that so many of them actually aren't necessarily scams. So I don't know what is wrong in the business sphere and all these venture capital companies but I think there needs to be some regulation to knock these mystery companies out, there's a whole lot clearly going on behind the scenes that none of us can see unless we know someone on the inside of it all.
 
Zack Birlew said:
Yes, I'm finding potential investors for Babs Do Studios can be names I've heard of on the news or business magazines or are directly connected to the bigger names but then there's just so many that nobody seems to know anything about but most research shows that so many of them actually aren't necessarily scams. So I don't know what is wrong in the business sphere and all these venture capital companies but I think there needs to be some regulation to knock these mystery companies out, there's a whole lot clearly going on behind the scenes that none of us can see unless we know someone on the inside of it all.
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You're replying to a spam-bot
 
MarkKilligan said:
You're replying to a spam-bot
Click to expand...
Really? I guess I'll leave it up to the mods to clean up the member list. I know these bots are everywhere on the social networks, really hard to keep a conversation going!
 
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