Jim Cramer says the spoils would go to the loser and the winner of Disney and Comcast’s brewing bidding war over key Twenty-First Century Fox assets.
It’s no secret that Wall Street is hungry for growth, which is why CNBC’s Jim Cramer wasn’t all that surprised when the Walt Disney Company upped its bid for a key portion of Twenty-First Century Fox on Wednesday.
Fox reportedly called Disney’s latest cash-and-stock bid of $71.3 billion, or $38 a share, “superior” to NBCUniversal parent Comcast’s latest bid, an all-cash offer valued at $65 billion, or $35 a share.
Cramer said that in this “multi-billion-dollar poker game,” Comcast can still up the ante.
“It’s got superb cash flow and most followers of the situation now believe the cable kingpin will come up with at least one more… higher bid, forcing Disney to raise their offer yet again,” the “Mad Money” host said Wednesday.
And after shares of Disney and Comcast closed up 0.99 and 1.77 percent respectively on Wednesday, Cramer argued that investors saw winning situations on both sides.
“The market is basically saying that to the victor and the loser go the spoils,” he said. “The victor gets Fox’s fabulous international growth; the loser will have enough borrowing capacity to embark on a truly mammoth buyback.”
Shares of Fox surged 7.38 percent into Wednesday’s close after hitting a fresh 52-week high intraday.
Cramer added that the battle doesn’t seem to be nearing a conclusion despite Fox’s statement in favor of Disney’s bid.
The Fox assets in question include a competitive business in India, which is on track to become the most populous country in the world by 2025; iconic franchises like Family Guy and Alien; and a large stake in streaming service Hulu, one of Netflix’s few established competitors.
Those kinds of growth prospects make the still “massively undervalued” Fox assets — undervalued because they were never thought to be for sale — especially attractive to the rival media giants, the “Mad Money” host argued.
“Make no mistake about it, Disney and Comcast will keep rallying until the market perceives that they’re finally paying too much for growth,” Cramer said. “Judging by today’s extremely positive action in not one, but both stocks, I don’t think they’ve gotten anywhere near [those] levels with their bids.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the owner of NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC and CNBC.com. Also, Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares of Comcast.
