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How Marvel Comics Captured a Generation of Investors
New communication methods developed by Marvel helped the company expand its investor base and make a splash on Wall Street
The Rise of Marvel ComicsHow a $100 million comic book company captured the interest of investors and revolutionized the investor relations industry through unique storytelling methods and mediums of communication.∼20 years later they would be acquired by Disney $DIS for $4B
Let’s set the scene
Its the early 1990s and Spiderman had just come off a year of 2.5M copies sold and had raised $63M for an IPO in July 1991
Its parent company, Marvel, was looking to make a splash on Wall Street and get potential investors excited about the business
But it had some problems…
The business of Marvel, and the comic book industry as a whole, was not seen by Wall Street as a money makerPrior to the IPO in 1991, Marvel was purchased by billionaire Ron Perelman for $82.5M
That same year the company did $70M in book sales
The company expected to go public, giving it a ∼$220M valuation
Marvel execs even valued the standalone brand of Spider-Man to be worth ∼$1B alone with toy, movie, and other forms of licensingWall Street wasn’t buying it.
Enter Gary Fisherman
Fisherman, a comic book fanatic and a trailblazer in the IR industry, was interested in how the Marvel stock would do and the PR related to it
Fisherman wanted to help, so he called up then-CEO of Marvel, Bill Bevins, to ask what he could do
Marvel Method
In addition to being SEC compliant, the comic book also had to be in guidelines of Marvel’s two-part storytelling method
The Marvel Method, created by the famous Stan Lee, is the process of the storyteller creating the plot and copy for each scene while the illustrator then creates the art separately
The Medium is in the Message
Glenn Herlding, an editor at Marvel, helped Fisherman get the best artists on developing the illustrations while Fisherman created the plot
Consulting with the SEC, lawyers, and Marvel, Fisherman wrote the story of Marvel characters discussing accounting measures including net income, Marvel publishing revenues, and net units sold
The Release
Debuting in Q4 1991, the quarterly report was a hit with the media and investors from the start
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times published pieces on the new and innovative ways Marvel was communicating their company’s story to investors
Through the Years
Riding off the success of Q3 1991, Marvel produced over 20+ quarterly and annual reports highlighting the company’s financials and characters by 1996
Fisherman, Herlding, and the rest of the team who worked on the reports won the International Academy of Communications Arts & Sciences, among other organizations
Fast Forward to Today
After a rough turn of the century for Marvel, during the 2000s the franchise began generating growing revenues again
Seven years later they were acquired by the storytelling behemoth, Disney, for $4B
To honor everyone’s hard work on this piece of IR history, we are giving away 5 original copies of Marvel’s quarterly/annual reports
Rules:
Must be following @EquityAnimal & @TickerHistory on Twitter
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