Filings Watch: Disney Sold Movies.com To Comcast For $17 Million
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
Earlier this year in June, Fandango, the online movie tickets service which is part of Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA), bought out movies info site Movies.com from Disney (NYSE: DIS), for an undisclosed sum at that time. Now the amount has come out, in Disney's latest annual 10-K filing with SEC: The movies.com business was sold for $17 million on June 18, 2008, resulting in a pre-tax gain of $14 million.
Movies.com, under its previous name MrShowbiz.com, was one of first online movie news and info sites. Then, after it morphed into Movies.com, Disney partnered with Fox to turn it into an online movies-on-demand site, but it didn't go past planning stages. Since Comcast bought it, not much extra has been done with the site, which now serves as a feeder info site to Fandango.
Some other details in the filing:
-- Disney had a $91 million loan receivable from Lehman Brothers, the bank that went under. The company says it is pursuing collection of this amount, but has fully reserved the amount. Unlikely it will recover it.
By Rafat Ali