Cramer on BloggingStocks: People have finally seen the light on Disney

But in the last six months, something's changed. Even as various parts of Disney have been uneven -- such as theme park occupancy down 5% from last year or their own admittedly disappointing movie sked -- the stock has powered ever higher. It is as if someone finally figured out that Disney is not some cyclical entertainment company like Six Flags or Cedar Fair (FUN) (Cramer's Take), and it is not some almost totally advertising-dependent company like CBS (CBS) (Cramer's Take) -- rather, it is an iconic company with brands like Snow White and Cars and Toy Story and Pirates that are no different from Tide and Crest and Head & Shoulders and Pampers and Prell. It has brands that don't go out of style, and with a little dust-off, some imagination (which it has in spades) and some advertising (which it can afford to put on nationally), there is a readymade renewal stream of income every day they turn the lights on.

This is a company that has figured out what brand really means. Each of its characters is a brand. If it didn't have enough of them, it just picked up 5,000 new ones in a Marvel (MVL) (Cramer's Take) acquisition that is brilliant in its ability to generate more billion-dollar brands like Procter (PG) (Cramer's Take) has.

Disney has the only programming that people can't TiVO on a consistent basis, ESPN, with a production quality that everyone knows is vastly superior to much sports coverage. It has music brands, singing brands, toy brands -- it is just a branding machine.

Wasn't that always the case with Disney? Didn't it always have these things going for it?

Yes.

So what changed this year to make us go all gaga (or all Miley -- Lady Gaga belongs to another label)?

We found out that Disney had something else we didn't know about -- it had cost control. It had discipline. It had the ability to look at fat and trim it in a take-no-prisoners mindset that many of us didn't believe existed at the company.

Bob Iger, you see, wasn't just good at taking small brands or decent bets and putting money behind them and then blowing the doors off the numbers. He turned out to be spectacular at finding out where Disney was spending too much. His cost cuts allowed the company to deliver a gigantic quarter, one that some of the analysts pooh-poohed as benefitting from an extra week, but those who looked deeper just found fabulous gross margin expansion where we didn't expect to find it.

Plus, don't forget, in a world where people cost a lot of money and stars cost hundreds of times that, Disney can switch gears and go animated and save the big star costs when it wants to. I say "when it wants to" because Bob Iger made a point on my show last night that he wasn't going to do Pirates of the Caribbean without Johnny Depp.

I like this story a lot, as was evident in my interview. I think that with the closing and integration of Marvel, with the return of some job growth, with the beginnings of the Shanghai park coming into focus and with a great slate of movies beginning with The Princess and the Frog on Friday, you have a stock that can mark time to go higher as the economy gets better and not go down much at all if things cool.

The earnings leverage off the cost cuts coupled with the strengthening advertising market for broadcast and cable and the gains from Marvel -- everyone on the Street has pretty low hopes for the acquisition and high concerns about dilution -- mean you have a stock that can be bought on any weakness, and bought aggressively.

Iger's done a great job since he has taken the helm. Disney's stock is up about 25% at a time when the S&P 500 is down more than 11%. I think from what we have seen during this economic downturn, people will be less likely to sell this stock on any economic weakness ahead and more likely to recognize that this is a secular growth story with multiple cylinders where no one cylinder can derail the engine.

Random musings: Thanks to the many people who showed up last night at the Barnes & Noble in White Plains for my Getting Back to Even signing. It was a huge hit!

Jim Cramer is co-founder and chairman of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer was long Procter & Gamble.