Walt Disney Company (DIS) • Fundamentals - the company's business, is it financially sound? Is it growing?

Per their earnings amounts for Disney, the answer is that they are growing. They are indeed fairly financially sound, but their overall revenues are not doing all that well. Over the last three full years, revenue has grown at a clip of about $3 billion a year as they were at $42.2 billion in 2012, $45 billion in 2013 and $48.8 billion in 2014. Gross profit grew at a good clip over that same time frame, going from $18.8 billion in 2012, $20 billion in 2013 and $22.3 billion in 2014. The proportion of gross profit to total revenue did edge up slightly, albeit by about one percent. Net income has grown at about a billion per year, so it too is looking good. Total assets are growing (about five billion a year over the last three full years). Total liabilities have edged up and are a little on the high side as compared to revenues. Indeed, 2014 revenue was $48.8 billion and their total liabilities are $39.23 billion. That means that their liabilities are more than four fifths of their annual revenue.

• Price history - what have other investors been willing to pay for the stock in the past (recall price in itself is irrelevant - you are looking for P/E ratios or Price to Growth)

Per Yahoo Finance, trailing P/E ratio is 23.35….forward P/E ratio is 19.07 (dated to September 27th, 2016). Actual year-over-year growth is seven percent. In looking at Disney's P/E ratio over time, it's currently at a high. The rate was at about 17.50 five years ago, dipped all the way to 12.50 (in late 2011) and has since risen...

The latter is about ten dollars higher than the current value.
• Catalysts - what will change investors' perception of the stock in the future?

Based on the headlines and metrics looked at, it would be things like how their movies do, how many people visit their theme parks and how high their debt is.

• Comparison - who are the competitors for this company? How does this stock compare to the competition? The industry averages? Consider Price/Earnings, fast growing products or services, international markets, etc.

Yahoo lists the competitors as Time Warner and Fox. Disney outdoes them on revenue by a wide margin (about $20 billion on average). Disney has the highest P/E ratio (although Time Warner is close…Fox is not) and only Fox has a higher net income, although it's only by a margin of about a billion and change.

Last Week of Activity

Over the last five business days, Disney stock has edged down by exactly a dollar…from $111.00 to $110.00. That would be about nine tenths of one percent as compared to where it started. During the midst of those five days, the stock actually swooned for about the first three days before bottoming out very early Tuesday at about $108. However, it rose back up to the $110 level about a third of the way into…