It's easy to hate Netflix (NFLX 2.51%) these days, and the disdain is gushing on Wall Street. A pair of analysts are talking down the near-term prospects of the leading premium streaming service on Tuesday. Is this really the right time to be pessimistic instead of opportunistic?
Sure, Netflix isn't at its best these days. The company has fallen short of its own subscriber guidance in three of the past five quarters. The stock is down 71% this year and off 75% since hitting all-time highs last November. We've seen layoffs, and its audience is shrinking through the first half of this year. It's a problematic look all around and hard to get excited heading into next-week's earnings report after Netflix has served a few quarterly report duds lately.
Bear with me. There's still time for a Hollywood ending.
Image source: Getty Images.
Climbing the Wall Street of worry
Two major Netflix analysts are putting out downbeat notes on Tuesday, specifically targeting next-Tuesday's quarterly update as a potential pressure point.
Benjamin Swinburne at Morgan Stanley is slashing his price target from $300 to $220 ahead of the report. He feels that the Wall Street consensus for next-week's update -- in terms of net subscriber additions and margins -- aren't factoring in the negative headwinds that are driving consumers away from spending on streaming video services. It's a foregone conclusion that Netflix will shed a lot of subscribers in next-week's report, but Swinburne expects stubborn churn rates and the rising U.S. dollar to hold back the former market-darling's chances to turn things around in the second half of this year. He's sticking to his neutral equal-weight rating.
Nat Schindler at BofA is even less enthusiastic. He's sticking to his underperform rating and his $196 price target, but his latest analyst note points out that leading data doesn't bode well for the platform's engagement levels. He sees a soft quarter for net subscribers.
Netflix itself warned in April that it expects to post a sequential decline of 2 million streaming subscribers worldwide for the period. Like Swinburne, Schindler feels that some analyst targets are too high. He fears that guidance next week for the third quarter could call for less than 2.2 million net subscriber adds that his fellow analysts are forecasting for the third quarter.
Sentiment has clearly soured on Netflix. The company that used to routinely offer conservative guidance has aimed too high lately. It's no longer fashionable to bet on a stock surge the day after it posts fresh financials. The contrarian take here is that a hungry Netflix will be a better Netflix.
Netflix isn't at its best right now, but it's still a kingmaker of content. How else can you explain how the latest season of Stranger Things -- broken out into two parts in late May and early July -- catapulted not one, but two decades-old songs to the top of the music charts? Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" was a digital chart topper last month, and earlier this month, Metallica's "Master of Puppets" proves that folks are still leaning on their Netflix subscriptions.
It's also not as if Netflix is standing still. It has already gone public with plans for cheaper ad-supported tiers and enhanced gaming initiatives. We're seeing reports of everything from theatrical distribution ahead of popular films to breaking up release schedules of popular shows to keep fans from binging and canceling.
You can teach a new media giant some old media tricks, and there's no platform visibly challenging Netflix's dominance as the leader of streaming service stocks. The stock is down, and the same can be said about analyst heads as we dredge our way to next-week's report. Let's not assume that Netflix doesn't know what it's doing.
