Was Disney's Pixar Acquisition a Success?

Ben Gilbert says the Pixar acquisition, twenty years on, is an obvious giant success. The first reason is that it clearly saved Disney Animation. If you believe the thesis that Disney Animation is the center of everything good and durable at the company, the case is already an easy answer.

Disney paid $7.4 billion, or $6.4 billion after backing out a billion of cash, and $6.4 billion is the hurdle. Toy Story alone did over $4 billion at the box office, which means $1.5 to $2 billion to Disney. Lifetime retail sales of all Toy Story consumer goods are $30 billion, and Disney's 5% licensing fee on the sales is another $2 billion. The box office share and the licensing fee come to $3.5 billion in very high margin revenue before any contribution from Disney Parks.

The parks piece includes 19 attractions across four lands and two hotels. The count still leaves out Disney Plus revenue, licensing deals with Netflix, and home video from Toy Story 1 and Toy Story 2. The Toy Story franchise alone returns at least half, and probably two-thirds, of the purchase price, even without the rest of the flywheel revenue.