The Free Kingdom.

Disney (DIS) — price its streaming subscribers at what the market pays for a Netflix subscriber, and the theme parks, the film studio, ESPN, and ABC are being handed to you for less than nothing.

Two companies sell subscription video to the world at scale. One of them sells only that: no parks, no cruise ships, no box office, no sports network, no broadcast affiliates — one product, delivered over the internet. The other operates the most valuable theme-park portfolio on earth, the film library behind Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars and a century of animation, the biggest name in American sports television, a broadcast network, and — almost as a footnote — a streaming stack with over two hundred million subscriptions of its own.

The market prices the first company, Netflix, at roughly $325 billion. It prices the second, Disney, at roughly $170 billion — down more than twenty percent over the past year. Netflix, the single-product company, is worth almost two Disneys. That gap is strange on its face. But the truly strange part only appears when you do the arithmetic the market is implicitly doing — valuing subscribers — and apply it consistently to both. This note does exactly that.

01 / The usersWho actually has the audience.

Both companies stopped reporting subscriber counts quarterly — Netflix after Q1 2025, Disney a few quarters later — which tells you management on both sides would rather be judged on profit than on headcount. Fine. But the last reported figures are recent enough to work with, and they are not close to what the valuation gap implies.

Netflix crossed 325 million paid memberships at the end of 2025, and its ad-supported tier now reaches more than 250 million monthly active viewers. Disney's stack, at last report: Disney+ at 131.6 million, Hulu at roughly 64 million, and ESPN+ at about 24 million — call it 220 million subscriptions, roughly two-thirds of Netflix's base, attached to a company valued at barely half of Netflix.

And the engagement data says Disney's audience is not fading — it is clawing its way back. In Nielsen's January 2026 Media Distributor Gauge, Disney captured 11.9% of all U.S. television viewing — its best print in a year, the largest month-over-month gain of any distributor, and within 0.6 points of YouTube's overall lead. Netflix held 8.8%. On the profit side, Disney+ and Hulu revenue grew 13% last quarter to $5.5 billion, and streaming operating income jumped 88% to $582 million — the segment's first double-digit operating margin. The streaming business Wall Street spent five years punishing Disney for is now growing, profitable, and taking share of screen time from everyone, Netflix included.

02 / The arithmeticOne thousand dollars per subscriber.

Here is the exercise. The market values Netflix at ~$325 billion against 325 million paid members. Divide one by the other and the market is paying almost exactly $1,000 per Netflix subscriber. Now apply that same price tag — the market's own price tag, not ours — to Disney's subscriber base, and see what's left over for everything else Disney owns.

Read that last line again. At Netflix's per-subscriber valuation, Disney's streaming business alone is worth $220 billion — more than Disney's entire market capitalization. The implied value of the rest of the company is negative fifty billion dollars. And "the rest of the company" is not a rounding error. It is:

• The Experiences segment — twelve theme parks, the cruise line, resorts and consumer products — which just posted a record $10.0 billion of operating income in fiscal 2025, more than most S&P 500 companies earn in total.
• The film studios — Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Walt Disney Animation, 20th Century — and a hundred-year content library that every rival streamer has to build from scratch.
• ESPN — still the most valuable brand in sports media, $4.6 billion of revenue last quarter, now with a direct-to-consumer product finally in market.
• ABC and the broadcast networks, declining but decidedly cash-generative.

Strip out the bundle overlap, drop ESPN+ entirely, count only Disney+ and Hulu — 195.6 million subs — and the implied value of streaming is still $196 billion. The parks alone earning $10 billion a year are still priced below zero.

03 / The honest caveatA Disney sub is not a Netflix sub.

We do not actually believe a Disney+ subscription deserves the full Netflix multiple, and the exercise is only useful if we say why. Netflix monetizes better: roughly $45 billion of 2025 revenue from those 325 million members, against about $22 billion annualized from Disney+ and Hulu — call it double the revenue per user. Netflix's operating margin on that revenue is in the high twenties; Disney's entertainment streaming margin just crossed 10% for the first time. Netflix also has a five-year head start on the advertising business and none of Disney's linear-TV decline to drag along. Per-subscriber parity is the bull's shortcut, not a law of nature.

So haircut it. Brutally. Value each Disney subscription at half a Netflix subscription — $500 — to account for every bit of the ARPU and margin gap. Disney streaming is then worth ~$110 billion, which leaves ~$60 billion for everything else. Sixty billion dollars for a parks business earning $10 billion a year (a six-times multiple on the most defensible physical-moat assets in media), plus the entire film studio and library, plus ESPN, plus ABC — businesses that together would plausibly fetch $150–200 billion if separated. The math refuses to be un-cheap at any reasonable assumption. That asymmetry is the point of the note.

04 / What would make us wrongThe bear has a case. It's just not this cheap.

The honest bear case: linear television is melting faster than streaming profits are scaling; ESPN's transition to direct-to-consumer could destroy more affiliate-fee dollars than it creates; parks are a cyclical business printing peak numbers at what may be a peak; and a succession question has hung over the company for half a decade. All true, and all reasons Disney should trade at some discount to a pure streaming comp. None of them get you to a negative value on the parks. Markets do occasionally hand out negative-value assets — usually near the bottom of a narrative, not the top of one.

What we are watching from here: whether streaming margins keep walking toward Netflix's (each point of margin closes the per-sub gap and mechanically re-rates the stack), the first full year of ESPN DTC economics, and parks bookings holding through the cycle. The thesis does not require Disney to become Netflix. It requires the market to stop valuing the world's best collection of entertainment assets as a liability stapled to a streaming service.

This note reflects the views of AMA Invest as of the publication date and is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or investment product, nor investment advice. Company names are referenced for illustration only and are not recommendations to buy or sell any security. Market capitalizations are approximate as of early July 2026; subscriber figures are the most recent company-reported counts (Netflix Q4 2025; Disney fiscal 2025) as both companies have discontinued quarterly subscriber disclosure. Nielsen viewing-share data from the January 2026 Media Distributor Gauge. Statements regarding markets, positioning, and outlook are the manager's opinions and are subject to change without notice. Forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainty; actual results may differ materially. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investments in the fund are available only to eligible investors who meet applicable suitability and accreditation requirements under relevant jurisdictions. All investments involve risk, including the possible loss of principal.