Financial Officer Tom Staggs told analysts Monday that Marvel's current third-party licensing deals with such studios as Sony /quotes/comstock/13*!sne/quotes/nls/sne (SNE 26.72, -0.58, -2.13%) and Fox /quotes/comstock/15*!nwsa/quotes/nls/nwsa (NWSA 10.64, -0.35, -3.14%) /quotes/comstock/15*!nws/quotes/nls/nws (NWS 12.52, -0.41, -3.17%) will remain in place under the terms Marvel agreed to in those transactions. (Fox is owned by News Corp., the parent company of Dow Jones & Co., which includes The Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch, the publisher of this report.) As those agreements expire, Disney will consider bringing those deals in-house, or could pursue other third-party deals,
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Disney is paying $4 billion for the rights to turn some 5,000 Marvel Comics characters into movies, theme parks and the like. Time to hear Bob Iger explain why that’s worthwhile.
Bob Iger, Disney CEO: Marvel doing a good job mining “rich intellectual property portfolio” to exploit lesser-known characters like Iron Man. We want to do more of that. Pixar deal three years ago shows that we can do this.
Mort Handel, Marvel chairman (*not Marvel CEO Issac Perlmutter*): Thanks!
Tom Staggs, Disney CFO: Marvel’s existing licensing deals aren’t a problem for us. As they expire we can either bring in house or do more as third-party deals. We’ll be exploiting more lesser-known characters, expanding overseas. Deal will be dillutive, but we’ll be repurchasing shares over the next year. Expect deal to be accretive in two years, will be positive to EPS by 2012.
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