Target's Quarterly Earnings Fall by 5.4%

The not-so-secret hidden costs of a not-so-secret groomer agenda.

Retail outlet Target missed the mark over the past quarter when its sales fell by 5.4%, a first for the store in the past six years.

The quarter, which ended on July 29, gave the retailer $24.8 billion in total revenue, approximately 4.9% lower than the same quarter from last year, according to Target's second quarter earnings report. The decrease in Target's sales came after the retailer received pushback from consumers over its 2023 Pride collection, which included items for children as young as newborns.

...

Earlier this year, it was reported that Target's stock lost $9 billion in the wake of its Pride collection. While the outlet has had annual Pride collections since 2012, its latest one has stirred up the most controversy due to its marketing being directed toward children.

...

In a survey published in June, 48% of respondents said that businesses "do too much" to celebrate Pride month, nearly triple the 17% who say stores do too little. Another 21% said the amount of effort was just right.

Additionally, 35% of regular Target shoppers in the poll said they were turned off and were "less likely" to shop there. Just 25% said they were more likely to shop at Target.

Steven Miller's legal organization is suing Target for tanking shareholder value and then lying about their "monitoring efforts" to prevent this from happening. Target, they claim, reassured investors that they would "monitor" the public reaction to their gay- and trans-heavy promotions, and this would be enough to protect shareholder value.

It was not.

A conservative legal organization sued Target (TGT.N) on Tuesday on behalf of an investor, saying the retailer misrepresented the adequacy of its risk monitoring when customer backlash over LGBTQ-themed merchandise caught it by surprise.

....

Craig claimed Target's board misstated its oversight of "social and political risks" to the company, focusing on the wishes of progressive activist investors and failing to account for potential backlash from customers.

...

Craig, who owns 216 Target shares, said the board falsely said it monitored social and political risk while focusing only on the risks associated with not achieving its ESG and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals.

The board "misrepresented its oversight because the board monitored only one side," Craig said in the lawsuit.

Speaking of a company I never, ever mention, Disney is also being sued. TSG, a major financier of movies, claims that Disney essentially defrauded them by "selling" Disney movies' streaming rights to the Disney+ service at a low price. Since Disney would be on both sides of that transaction -- Disney Entertainment sells the streaming rights to Disney+ streaming -- it would be very easy to set too low a price, to avoid paying out profits to the financiers, such as TSG.

Which is exactly what TSG alleges Disney did.

Now you might say: But where would the profits even be? Disney produces nothing but bombs.

Well yes, but 20th Century Fox financed a movie that made a huge pile of money: Avatar 2. Disney then bought 20th Century Fox for (checks notes) $70 billion.

And that's the movie TSG is claiming that Disney lowballed the streaming rights value for, to deny Avatar 2's investors their due profit. And they say they did this so that Disney+ could acquire content on the cheap, and thereby attract subscribers.

Among other things. They're also making some claims that are confusing to me, something about Disney (well, 20th Century Fox at the time) denying them some profits to The Shape of Water (not Avatar 2: The Way of Water) and that resulted in them not being able to invest in more profitable movies, like Avatar 2: The Way of Water.

Disney is being accused of hindering a deal between 20th Century Studios and TSG Entertainment Finance in an effort to boost Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions, stock prices and executive compensation. In a new lawsuit, TSG Entertainment Finance says an independent audit of three films including best picture winner The Shape of Water revealed it's owed more than $40 million -- after all is said and done, the company suspects the total will be in the hundreds of millions -- and the cash shortfall has caused it to take a worse position in its investment in Avatar: The Way of Water.

TSG on Tuesday sued 20th Century Studios for breach of contract and Disney for inducing that breach. The financier says it has invested more than $3.3 billion into well over 100 films, which also include Bohemian Rhapsody, Deadpool, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Martian, The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Banshees of Inisherin.

In a blistering intro, TSG's attorney John Berlinski opened with discussing "Hollywood Accounting" and arguing that it's now a common practice employed by studios to "cheat" profit participants out of money.

"Disney (and the executives running it) had and continue to have every incentive to do anything and everything they can, including manipulating distribution of the Qualifying Pictures and preventing TSG from liquidating its interests in certain tranches of Qualifying Pictures, to attempt to boost Disney's share price at the expense of TSG and other profit participants," writes Berlinski in the complaint.

Berlinski -- who led Scarlett Johansson's fight against Disney over her payment on Black Widow after it was given a simultaneous release on Disney+ and the stars of Bones in their profit participation dispute with Fox -- described this as a "chilling example" of the practice.

...

Over the years, the money TSG received from its investments "decreased dramatically" and the company launched an independent audit to investigate the financial records. Based on what the auditors found in their sample, they estimate that TSG's defined gross receipts were reduced by at least $54.5 million from Electronic Sell-Through distribution and it was improperly charged $35 million in costs related to Movies Anywhere.

...

TSG believes Disney made 20th renegotiate its deal with HBO to boost Disney+ and Hulu and "give up a significant portion of its guaranteed HBO license fees" in order to do so -- and that it shortened its home video window to get things up on its streamers faster.

"On information and belief, these deviations from the traditional windowing of Fox's films -- in spite of Fox's express and implied obligations to TSG -- were a direct result of Disney's interference with the RPA in pursuit of its ultimate goal: to prop up its wholly- or majority-owned streaming platforms and the share price of its stock using content from other divisions of the company," writes Berlinski in the complaint.

He points out that Iger essentially admitted sacrificing everything to make Disney Minus grow "really fast."

posted by Ace at 04:40 PM

| Access Comments