When DreamWorks Animation SKG went public in late 2004, its shares opened at $28 – above the $23-$25 range targeted in its prospectus – and closed the day at $38.75.

It was a heady time. Indeed, shares of Walt Disney Co. closed that day at $21.25.

Last Thursday, the day Philadelphia’s Comcast Corp. announced it would purchase DreamWorks, its shares closed at $39.95. Disney? It closed at $105.28.

To be fair, Disney had a running start, deeper pockets, and different corporate aspirations. And it’s hard to compete on an ever-expanding playing field against well-established, well-banked competition.

And so the decision by Jeffrey Katzenberg, et al., to hand the keys to Comcast’s NBCUniversal division might be a win all the way around.

DreamWorks, which relied solely on its intermittent slate of animated features, posted some winners (“Shrek,” “Kung Fu Panda”), but those never filled the coffers enough to smooth the impact of its big losers (“Penguins of Madagascar,” “Mr. Peabody and Sherman,” and other never-released titles). Cover from NBCU ought to help mitigate some of those duds as well as integrate the winners into theme parks, merchandise, and online properties.

In fact, it’s widely expected that the addition of DreamWorks to the Comcast portfolio will allow that company to pose the greatest challenge to Disney’s media dominance. They match up nicely – Universal was the box office leader last year, its Harry Potter theme parks are going gangbusters, and NBC edged Disney’s ABC in ratings last year. Now, DreamWorks offers Comcast a toehold in Asia, where its animated properties do very well.

So even if the $4 billion-plus bill for DreamWorks, including debt, looks like folly compared with Disney’s purchases of Lucasfilm (“Star Wars” franchise), Marvel (all those superheroes), and Pixar (Oscar after Oscar for animation) for the same amount or less, it’s beginning to look more and more like Bob Iger picked up some bargains. Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts simply paid retail.

If there is a loser in all this, perhaps its Viacom, which may have missed out on a potential suitor.

CBS has already been split off, its sputtering Paramount studio is likely to be on the block shortly (at a discount), and there is that nasty battle for control as Sumner Redstone nears the end of his life.

Comcast might have paid market rate for DreamWorks, but it keeps Katzenberg, who will head NBCU’s new DreamWorks New Media unit, and can leverage characters who will never age.

Viacom? There’s Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible,” MTV, Comedy Central, and that’s about it.

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It never ceases to amaze, the stuff we ship overseas.

Jobs, of course, is one thing mentioned often. And there are movies, too.

But there are also tons – and tons – of waste.

There was a time when paper was the biggest export by volume out of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. That was a decade ago, when factories in China were willing to pay $200 a ton for scrap that would be recycled into cardboard boxes. By late 2008, the price was down to $40 a ton, making it not worth the effort to pick the stuff up.

Then there was hay. At $13 a ton in 2013, it was cheaper to ship alfalfa grown in Utah to China than it was to grow it there.

Now there is scrap metal. Or there used to be. As we report in this week’s issue, local scrap metal firms are now struggling.

With China’s economy slowing, there’s less demand for all the refuse we used to send over to be repurposed into stuff we wanted to buy.

And so with the price of scrap down to $200 a ton from $400 a ton just a couple of years ago, local dealers are feeling the squeeze.

Stuck between the falloff in demand and increasing regulatory pressure at home (think rising minimum wage, environmental rules, and health care costs), many businesses look like they won’t be able to make it.

That happens in all industries at some time in their lifecycle. Some rebound, others don’t. But we see this one coming, and the properties that house these businesses pose particular challenges: They tend to be in poorer neighborhoods and might in some cases need environmental review. A revitalization plan that meshes the needs of communities with the availability of potentially troubled properties should be developed.