Although Netflix (NFLX -0.40%) stock is down significantly this year, Fool.com contributor Danny Vena believes it's an unqualified buy right now. In this Motley Fool Live segment from "The Rank," recorded on March 14, he discusses some of the massive opportunities for the stock that a lot of investors are discounting.
Danny Vena: It shouldn't be a surprise to anybody here that I rated Netflix higher than some of the other ones. Now, I will say that if you think about streaming video in general, and I want to talk about it in general first before I talk about Netflix specifically. But during the pandemic, one of the things that we saw was a huge pull forward of subscriber growth. A lot of people that would not have become subscribers or would be subscribers over the next year or two, all of a sudden, push-forward those plans and subscribe to Netflix and other streaming services. Then what we saw is we saw a large deceleration in the growth at Netflix and all of its competitors as well.
I think that Netflix still has a massive opportunity going forward. This is the pioneer of streaming video worldwide. They've got like over 220 million subscribers. They have arguably the largest library of content of any streaming service. But when you get that big, the growth is going to slow and it's inevitable. Now that said, I still think there are still massive opportunities internationally that I think a lot of investors are discounting. But if you look at some of the other things that have happened with Netflix, just in recent months and years, Netflix has become the most Emmy winning and the most nominated television network and the most Oscar winning and the most nominated movie studio of 2021.
One of the biggest arguments against Netflix was, "I can't find anything to watch." Netflix has more award-winning content than any other network on a regular basis. Just recently they released Squid Game, which became their most watched original series ever. They released two big films, Red Notice and Don't Look Up, which both got released in the last couple of months and huge winners. I am still a big Netflix fan. Netflix is still among my highest percentage of my portfolio in terms of top three stocks. But that said, I think Netflix is going to have to grow more slowly than we've seen over the past decade. I'm certainly not selling Netflix. In fact, I think the fact that the stock is down so much over the past couple of months makes Netflix an unqualified buy. But I don't think it's going to grow as fast for the coming 10 years as it did over the past 10 years.
