At The Motley Fool, we poke plenty of fun at Wall Street analysts and their endless cycle of upgrades, downgrades, and "initiating coverage at neutral." The pinstripe-and-wingtip crowd is entitled to its opinions, but we have some pretty sharp stock pickers down here on Main Street, too. And we're not always impressed with how Wall Street does its job.
So perhaps we shouldn't be giving virtual ink to "news" of analyst upgrades and downgrades. And we wouldn't -- if that were all we were doing. Fortunately, in "This Just In," we don't simply tell you what the analysts said. We also show you whether they know what they're talking about. To help, we've enlisted Motley Fool CAPS, our tool for rating stocks and analysts alike. With CAPS, we track the long-term performance of Wall Street's best and brightest -- and its worst and sorriest, too.
Two stars of the silver screen
You may not have heard about this, but Netflix
According to B. Riley, it makes Netflix a "buy."
In a curious instance of dual buy-ratings, investment banker Riley initiated coverage on both Netflix and one of its biggest rivals yesterday, urging investors to buy shares of both Netflix and Redbox operator Coinstar
Let's go to the tape
Nothing's ever certain in this world we live in, but I actually think Riley might be onto something here. Why? Well, let's start with the analyst's record. Riley hasn't been a particularly active stocks-rater in recent months. In fact, according to the folks at Briefing.com, the analyst hasn't filed a single public recommendation through the ratings aggregator in nearly a year.
That's a crying shame, because, according to the research we were able to do on Riley back when it was distributing its advice regularly, this is one bang-up analyst. Over the past five years, Riley has achieved better than 54% accuracy on the recommendations it's made, with the average Riley stock pick soundly beating the Dow Jones Industrial Average
Netflix: a dark-horse candidate for deep value
Now, I know a lot of customers -- and investors -- are upset with Netflix right now. When Amazon.com
Still, despite all the help Netflix's unforced errors have given the competition, analysts still expect to see the company grow earnings at a near 30% annual clip over the next five years. If they're right about then, then I can't help but agree with B. Riley that the stock is now looking attractive.
Netflix today costs just 28 times trailing earnings, and about 19 times trailing free cash flow. Sure, these numbers could shift a bit when Netflix reports earnings next week. But as for today, based on what we know now, the stock's selling for under a 1.0 ratio of both P/E to growth -- the very definition of a "fair price."
Will Netflix blow it again on Monday or "blow it out da box?" Add the stock to your Fool Watchlist now, and be first in line to get the news when it happens.