Disney Has Its Next CEO

In this podcast, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Rachel Warren discuss:

• Disney's new CEO.
• Bob Iger's legacy.
• Chipotle's declining results.
• The big pharma GLP-1 battle.

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A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on Feb. 04, 2026.

Travis Hoium: Disney has their new CEO. Is this time different? Motley Fool Money starts now. Welcome to MotleyFool Money. I'm Travis Hoium joined today by Lou Whiteman and Rachel Warren. The Bob Iger era is officially coming to a close on March 18, Lou, after Josh D'Amaro was chosen to be the next CEO, Dana Walden, who was in the running to be CEO, is going to be promoted to Chief Creative Officer. They both got big contracts along with that. Let's start with Iger. How are we going to look back on his tenure over the last 20 or so years at Disney?

Lou Whiteman: Yeah, the two tenuers, which is what's funny about it. He's had an incredible career. Let's just say that first. The most recent tenure, he turned streaming around. Streaming was a $2 billion plus loser back in 2022. It's now a profitable business, $1 billion in profits. I think, he gets a lot of credit for that. Part of that is just maturation, so I don't know how much credit. Here's the thing, though. The stock price. Really liked his first tenure more than the second. The stock has done nothing. How much of that is him and how much of it is, again, the maturing business and the markets losing faith in that core television business? I don't know how much credit to give him for his accomplishments or how much fault to give him for his failures with the stock market. I will say this, he was a steady hand at the ship. The question now is, will he become Howard Schultz. Will he actually go away? Will he come back again? There's even rumors he's going to run for president, which again, would I guess get him off a Disney's case for a while. We can talk about what this means for Disney afterwards, but we really need for him to either walk away or stay involved.

Travis Hoium: Stay on for life.

Lou Whiteman: The worst scenario is a repeat of last time where he did neither, and that didn't work out well.

Travis Hoium: What is different this time is they apparently had over 100 people on their radar for this job. I think that's always interesting because there was really only two or three who seemed to be seriously in the running. But his tenure is going to end about nine months early from the contracted end at the end of 2026.

Lou Whiteman: There's a story there.

Travis Hoium: I don't know what it is. There must be a story. Well, and also he's going to be an advisor but not have a real role coming into the office, which he did have when Chapek took over going into the pandemic. It seems like there's definitely a story. There always is in these palace intrigue things. But it does seem a little bit different. This time, like, Disney knows they have to kick him out the door.

Lou Whiteman: One thing on those 100 candidates, balderdash. There's no way they had 100 candidates. What's its expression in football?

Travis Hoium: They wrote a list with 100 people on it.

Lou Whiteman: If you have two quarterbacks, you have no quarterback. If I took that seriously that they really had 100 people interview, that means they had no clue what they wanted to. I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to the board that maybe they had a list of 100 people, but they didn't really consider 100 people there. To me, that would be more scary than positive.

Travis Hoium: Rachel, we're going to look back on this Iger tenure, especially the last decade positively?

Rachel Warren: I think so. I agree with Lou. I think you have to look at both tens together. You think of the first one from '05-2020. There was really a series of very transformative acquisitions that formed the company we know today. You think of the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm this really built that modern Disney content engine that we know. Iger grew Disney's market cap from about 56 billion to more than 230 billion during that initial run. Look at these last few years he returned in late 2022 to replace Bob Chapek. Really, that second stint has been focused on stabilizing the company. He implements about $5.5 billion in cost cuts, really working to achieve streaming profitability, a lot of challenges that the company has faced during that time, including the Hollywood labor strikes. I think that a lot of the last few years has been more about stabilization than some of the growth that investors had come to expect in prior years. One thing I'll note, Iger is planning to remain senior advisor and board member through the end of 2026 to mentor new leadership, and presumably that might help the company to avoid some of the mistakes, if you will, that occurred during the JPEG era. I think that's something that investors should feel pleased with as they're looking at this transition, I think it's a much better thought out, well planned, orderly transition than perhaps we saw before.

Travis Hoium: Lou, let's look forward now. We do know that D'Amaro is coming from the parks. Chapek, by the way, also came from the parks, which that was one thing that I noticed, but I went, we already tried this once. Do we really want to do this again? But it does seem. You're right. It does seem like the linear business and the streaming business at least makes sense now. Back in 2019, 2020, it was Disney plus was a rocket ship. But they obviously overbuilt. You had all this confusion during the pandemic. But now we know that, look, the parks is the core of the business. Now the question is, what happens to the rest of the business? What happens to these linear networks? In particular, what happens to ESPN? Where do you think Disney goes from here?

Lou Whiteman: Yeah, so here's a bold prediction. I can't imagine Disney without the studio. I'm not going to go as far as, like total spin off.

Travis Hoium: Which studio? All the Disney studio?

Lou Whiteman: Production because there's so much tie in. Maybe they just do it with alliances, but some form of a media spinout. I think definitely ESPN, maybe Hulu and ABC, we've talked a lot about what's going on with Warner Brothers Discovery and about the limited number of chess pieces. I think there's more chess pieces than we know. I think the Disney of the future is going to be somehow more streamlined. We talked about the stock. Stock has done nothing for years with all of these great assets, and it really feels like whether we're talking about GE, whether we're talking about so many of these companies, that it's time to wonder is the sum of the parts, failing the valuation of the whole. Maybe they do go with everything and just form, some perpetual marketing agreements so they can use the IP of of the studios and the parks, but I really think that there's going to be some spin out of media or some separation of Disney. I'm going to say we're going to hear something about this in the next couple of years, but definitely in the next five years.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, if we look back on the early Bob Iger tenure, a lot of those big moves that he made buying Pixar, buying Marvel was done in the first couple of years. I think Pixar, it sounds like he made that call to Steve Jobs basically as soon as he got the job. The wheels were spinning there, it'll be interesting to see what D'Amaro does. When we come back, we are going to talk about Chipotle and why people are eating out less. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Chipotle results were reported last night, and they left a lot to be desired in a lot of ways. Rachel, what should we take from this quarter at Chipotle? We had a lot of negative comps, but this is this seems like a theme with a lot of restaurant stocks right now.

Rachel Warren: Yeah, there's certainly a theme that we're seeing with a lot of these fast casual chains. For Chipotle, transactions in fourth quarter dropped by about 3.2%. This is as we're seeing consumers, particularly those in the 25-35 age group that's really a core cohort for Chipotle, as well as those earning under 100k annually, those are people that are really pulling back on discretionary spending. Operating margins actually fell a bit compared to a year ago, down to 14.1%. We're also in a time where rising beef, avocado and labor costs that the company has chosen not to fully offset are impacting margins there. They slightly beat on earnings per share. They were marginally ahead of the consensus estimates for revenue. That was up about 5% year over year. They're still growing aggressively. They opened about 132 new restaurants in fourth quarter alone. They're looking to open up to 370 new locations in 2026. A few things that I think we should note looking at this space. Chipotle is dealing with issues that some of its rivals are as well. Sweet, gray and Kava are a few that come to mind. We're seeing a shift in how consumers are approaching restaurant spending. We're seeing some of these sit down chains. Think of Darden restaurants. They own olive garden, Texas Roadhouse are gaining market share. I think consumers are becoming increasingly picky about where they're going to put their money to work, and sometimes they're prioritizing those sit down experiences. At the same time, McDonald's has been actually holding pretty steady in terms of their growth. Taco Bell's been a standout performer within Yum brands. Starbucks is even showing some improvements. Systematic challenges in the industry at large. Chipotle, I think, is dealing with more broader industry headwinds than company specific issues, but I would not expect this to resolve in the next few quarters.

Travis Hoium: Lou, one of the things I'm looking at with restaurants taxes, how many times did they mentioned GLP-1s? In Chipotle call, they mentioned it twice, and it was actually in relation to their new protein bowl of chicken. For $3.80.

Lou Whiteman: The nugget.

Travis Hoium: It's the new version of the nugget, slightly healthier than a nugget maybe it is interesting that that seemed to be their answer not only to GLP-1s, but also people spending less, saying, hey, if you just want to spend four bucks on some chicken, come here.

Lou Whiteman: Yeah. It's a weird time because Rachel's right. Some of this does seem to be just maybe stress on the consumer. I think it makes sense that if the consumer is stressed, they still do planned night outs or special occasion, and you're still on the fly, but that middle ground where you could go home and cook or save a little money, but you may just get carry out or something that fast casual is what's suffering? I do wonder, though. That implies it's short term. I do wonder if some of this is we're just so saturated. We've talked about this before. This category didn't exist when I was growing up. It is from scratch, and it has been nothing but growth. Maybe we've reached the natural limit to this market, and we have a lot of competitors here. Maybe this speaks to a longer term problem. What I do know, fourth straight quarter traffic declines. The good news is they are forecasting flat same store sales in 2026, which would be better than down. Down in 2025, Travis, last time they were down was the Ecola scandal. Yeah, a decade ago.

Travis Hoium: Which by the way, was a great buying opportunity.

Lou Whiteman: It was that time because they were young. Here's my question. They're talking about growth overseas. That's the big thing. Maybe Middle East wants this, Singapore, South Korea. Yes, Mexico. I don't know if that's going to be the path forward, the way from, say, 2016-2025, things improve. You're still paying 30 times forward earnings for a mature business, period, I'd rather get a Brito bowl right now from them than get a share of the stock. I like the company. The growth phase is over, and what are you left with?

Travis Hoium: It will be very interesting to see what happens not only with hipole but with restaurants in general. We'll have another few earnings reports coming out in the next few weeks, and GLP-1s are going to be a topic. Speaking of those GLP-1s, they're not all great for even the pharmaceutical companies. We'll get to that in a moment. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. The GLP-1 craze was started by Eli Lily and Novo Nordisk are really the two companies that are associated with this. But Rachel Novo Nordisk took a huge hit in the market, and they're actually expecting a decline in the business. What is the story behind? It seems like GLP-1 should be just growing forever, but it seems like the competitive dynamics are really changing.

Rachel Warren: Yeah, this is really a tale of two very different businesses. You think about Novo Nordisk. They had a much slower growing insulin business before they enjoyed the boom from their GLP-1 success. Eli Lilly had a much more established, broader, diverse range of products that they were selling and a much more profitable foundation from which to launch into that growth. We are seeing a real disparity in how these two companies are performing. Novo Nordisk, they're targeting anywhere 5-13% decline in sales and profits for 2026. They've said that the most favored nation pricing deal they reached with the Trump administration has been impactful here. But there's a lot of factors here as well. You've got key patents for semiglutide. That's the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wigovi those are expiring in major international markets soon, including China, Canada, and Brazil. There's, of course, the loss of market share to key rivals like Eli Lily, but also some of the cheaper copycat, if you will, compounded versions of its drugs. CEO is saying this is going to be a very challenging year. All of that does not bode particularly well for the company. Now, contrast that. You've got Eli Lily. They had record results. They're looking for their full year revenue to rise as much as 25% in 2026. Meanwhile, even as Novo Nordisk they launched their oral semiglutide, Eli Lilly is looking for approval for their next generation weight loss pill in mid 2026. That's broadly expected to really cannibalize a lot of the sales in the market. They had a 43% revenue increase in fourth quarter alone. They saw sales of their key GLP-1 drugs both jump by more than 100%, and Eli Lilly became the first pharma company to surpass a $1 trillion market cap in 2025. Yes, there are some industry specific challenges, but I think the issues that Novo Nordisk is facing are much more specific to that business.

Lou Whiteman: Yeah. It's a terrible joke here. Who knew the GLP-1s were slimming for Novo Nordics.

Travis Hoium: Does anyone not have a GLP-1 at this point?

Lou Whiteman: There's more coming to the market over the next couple of years, too.

Travis Hoium: Pricing headwinds in an increasingly competitive market. How many times was that set?

Lou Whiteman: You talk about the restaurant stocks. How often was GLP-1 said in their calls? How often was just pricing headwinds set on the Norvo the oral was supposed to be the solution here. But if you look at it, it's 2.4 milligrams versus 25 milligrams for the oral. That's 10X, the amount of active ingredient. I'm curious, we're seeing margins fall. How much of that is just start up here and how much of that is somewhat permanent if they do, succeed in moving people to the oral version, what does that do to profitability? That seems like a slippery slope, as far as that being the answer. I don't know if Norvo has a good answer right here, and as you say, it's only going to get more competitive from here. I get the market's reaction.

Travis Hoium: Again, another thing that is going to be fascinating to follow because this has been a huge growth story for a number of different companies and a lot of speculation behind some of the new GLP-1s that are coming. But like Lou said, if you're coming into a very competitive market, maybe it's not the best to be those producers which are having margin pressure, even if you have higher volume. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows the Motley Fool's editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out your show notes. For Lou Whiteman, Rachel Warren, Dan Boyd, and Dan Boyd, Kristi Waterworth behind the glass, I'm Travis Hoium. We'll see you here tomorrow.

Lou Whiteman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Rachel Warren has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Travis Hoium has positions in Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Chipotle Mexican Grill, GE Aerospace, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery. The Motley Fool recommends Novo Nordisk and recommends the following options: short March 2026 $42.50 calls on Chipotle Mexican Grill. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.