Disney will stop issuing stock certificates, delivering shares only in electronic form in a blow to would-be collectors of the documents featuring drawings of Bambi and Mickey Mouse

October 10, 2013 Leave a comment

Disney Stops Issuing Stock Certificates in Blow to Fans

Walt Disney Co. will stop issuing stock certificates on Oct. 16, delivering shares only in electronic form in a blow to would-be collectors of the documents featuring drawings of Bambi and Mickey Mouse. When investors transfer shares, they will be reissued without certificates, Disney said today in a regulatory filing. That will shrink the supply for websites pitching the items as a way to interest children in investing.Collectors have made Disney certificates the most popular at GiveAShare.com, a Gilbert, Arizona-based company that provides the documents in a frame for a fee. While many companies have eliminated paper shares, Disney’s have stayed top sellers, said Bob Kerstein, founder of Scripophily.com, a website for collectors.

“It’s such a PR tool for them,” Kerstein said. “Disney was the major holdout. I’m pretty surprised. Everybody’s in cost-cutting mode.”

Disney’s stock certificates feature founder Walt Disney surrounded by Dumbo, Donald Duck and other characters, according to the website Oneshare.com, which also offers framed shares for a fee.

“Like hundreds of other companies, Disney will no longer be issuing paper stock certificates in an effort to create a more secure and efficient system,” the company said in a statement. Collectors may request non-negotiable “certificates of acquisition,” Disney said.

“It’s not the same as a stock certificate, but it’s nice that Disney is recognizing fans want something,” Kerstein said.

Collector’s Items

Certificates dating back to the company’s initial public stock offering and hand-signed by Disney can fetch more than $25,000, Kerstein said. Companies have been doing away with them for years because of the expense, he said.

GiveAShare’s favorites list includes Disney, Harley-Davidson Inc. (HOG) and Facebook Inc. (FB) Because Facebook issues its stock electronically, GiveAShare provides a personalized replica, according to the site.

Disney’s change is likely to spark a last-minute rush among collectors and higher prices for existing certificates, according to Rick Roman, a co-founder of GiveAShare.

“Since we started, Disney has been the most popular,” Roman said in an interview. “It appeals to kids, they have one of the best-looking certificates and there’s some fanatical adults that want them as well. That ends up being a good way to teach kids about stocks.”

Disney, based in Burbank, California, fell 0.9 percent to $64 at the close in New York. The stock has gained 29 percent this year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Palmeri in Los Angeles at cpalmeri1@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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