Brian Roberts
Second, we’ve built the Company by looking at lots and lots and lots of acquisitions. And we’ve done some and we’ve looked at a lot more. And our goal again is to find a way to create -- accelerate what the operating business can do with more shareholder value, whether that was AT&T Broadband, QVC or NBCUniversal or a host of others. And so, yes, we’ve looked at Fox, not because we went looking for it, because it came to market. And I think ultimately, the same with Sky. And I can’t talk more about it other than to say, the notion of that means, you don’t love your core business just isn’t right. We’ve proved that with our results, I hope. And I think that we -- the proof in the pudding is if you bought our stock in 1972, you’d have a 17.5% compounded return for nearly 50 years. If you put that same money in the S&P 500, it would be just over 10%. As you all know, the power of that compounding makes it exponentially believably different of where you’d be. We are all in on shareholder and long-term returns, and yet it’s times in the Company where we felt we had to do deals and there’ve been times in the Company where we felt we were in a strategically great place.
Right now, I feel we’re in a strategically great place and any deals we’re doing we’re trying to play offense in a belief that we over the long term can create exceptional shareholder value. Sometimes that’s hard to prove on day one. Over time, we hope we can do so. And nobody’s got a perfect track record, certainly we don’t. But, the best way to judge us is that long-term stock return, and I think we’re very proud of that.
Brett Feldman
So, it’s basically safe to say that right now you’re thinking about M&A as being something that could be additive to your business not changing.
Brian Roberts
Absolutely, could have just said that and been a lot shorter
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Brian Roberts
Definitely. We have more television viewing than any other media company when you look at any kind of ratings or viewership share. We have in the last 12 months the number two film studio based on box-office from this time back a year. And every new over-the-top player, every new entrant basically took all of our products. They want it and need it to be -- to have us to be part of their bundle. So, almost any way you measure it, we have a very fluid and relevant seat at the table. Again, if someone puts themselves for sale, we’re going to take a look. Some prices, we’re buyers; in other prices, we pass. And that’s I think my job is to do. But, I don’t feel, as I said earlier, that we need to do anything when. When we bought NBCUniversal, we got a wonderful with scale. The one business that we don’t have in the 2018 results in a meaningful way is animation just in the way things went this year. But as we look to 2019 and 2020, one of the reasons we brought DreamWorks Animation to go along with illumination as increasing our capabilities on what has for us been the most profitable part of the film business, on a sustainable basis.
So, television, yes; film, yes; theme parks are an amazing business for us. We have one competitor. We’re the smallest of those competitors. And many more than just that competitor as you look around the world, but in Orlando in particular and Los Angeles. And we’ve been growing faster than any part of the company. And we’ll have some lumpiness from quarter-to-quarter, but we have a strategy, we’re opening an exciting park in China in a few years, Osaka, Orlando and Hollywood with hotels and a roadmap. So, we really excited about that business, and looking for new attractions and new opportunities.