A Netflix (NFLX +0.14%) bull is starting to get even more bullish. BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield is raising his price target on the streaming pioneer from $170 to 225. He is naturally sticking to his buy rating on the stock.
The update isn't a surprise. Netflix stock has surged since last week's blowout second-quarter results. The stock closed at nearly $187 on Tuesday, making a $170 price goal incompatible with a current bullish market call. The bump to $225 is still newsworthy. More than a dozen Wall Street pros jacked up their price targets last week, but the highest raise then was $210.
Image source: Netflix.
Digital domination
Netflix has been an audience-devouring beast. It topped 100 million streaming accounts worldwide during the quarter, and by the end of June it finally hit the point where international subscribers outnumbered stateside streaming accounts.
Analysts were generally playing up Netflix's global potential last week, but according to BTIG's Greenfield there's still some juice to be had closer to home. He was surprised by the acceleration in U.S. subscriber growth.
Netflix closed out the second quarter with 1.07 million more domestic streaming customers than it had when the period began. The company disappointed investors during last year's second quarter, gaining just 160,000 net subscribers. This is only the second time in the past six quarters that Netflix has tacked on more net additions domestically than it did a year earlier, and it will be interesting to see if the trend continues or if this was just an easy comp against last year's rough second quarter.
Investors are right to question how large Netflix can get. It now commands an audience of nearly 104 million streaming subscribers, and that includes a whopping 51.9 million stateside accounts. Netflix has become ubiquitous, and the impressive feat is that it's been gaining in popularity even after increasing the price of its product by 25% over the past three years.
Subscribers keep coming, and BTIG's Greenfield is boosting his year-end subscriber target by another 2.4 million after last week's rosy report. Netflix is living up to its end of the deal, throwing more and more money at content that it can spread out across the largest paying audience among streaming services. Put another way, the money that Netflix is spending on content is growing a lot faster than its price increases -- making it a better value for its growing subscriber base. As long as Netflix keeps swinging for the fences and connecting, the analyst price target bumps are likely to continue.
