Marvel Takes Stock Tumble Marvel's stock opened up with a significant tumble yesterday and kind of stayed right there all day, with a second day of another dip and (thus far) slight rally. This followed news of worse-than-expected third quarter '05 revenues and a readjusted outlook on 2006 that definitely says "good, republican cloth coats" rather than "pimped-out, full-length furs."
The major comicsnewssites weighed in with their take on what happened, basically a cyclical dry-up on Spider-Man licensing and a blasted-out toy business into which Marvel's toy division was trying to move some dubious properties, including TNA Wrestling figures.
Proving once and for all why I'm never going to get rich playing the market, I always thought the stock was over-inflated and figured yesterday's news wasn't all that bad, indicating a strong core business weathering an expected downturn. I'm also biased towards comics, with a tendency to see that part of the business as the core around which the rest of Marvel Entertainment's businesses are levels of luxury to be wrapped in or jettisoned depending on market caprice.
I still imagine that this will have little to no effect on publishing, Marvel's run as a company at its current, still slightly inflated size and slate of general expectations with play itself out in slightly diminishing cycles, Motley Fool will run another 12,863 analyses, Marvel will buy back a bunch of stock during these slight down periods and everyone involved at the top of the corporation will continue to wear solid gold shoes and diamond-studded underwear for a very long while. But really: don't trust me.
Some days, Spider-Man can't show up quickly enough.