Netflix had an incredible final quarter of 2024, and today the company — and its investors — are reaping the rewards.
Shares in Netflix (NFLX on the NASDAQ) soared past $100 apiece on Tuesday afternoon following the release of the company’s fourth-quarter earnings. In a letter to shareholders, Netflix disclosed record growth with almost 19 million subscriberscompletely blowing away media analysts’ forecasts. Netflix’s revenue topped $10 billion, even as its quarterly profit fell. Regardless, there’s a fix for that: Netflix, too announced price increases over all their subscriptions. Netflix, in turn, forecasts better than previously expected revenue growth for the current quarter, Q1 2025. Wall Street love that.
How much? We can quantify that.
When markets opened this morning, NFLX stock hit nearly $1,000 each (instead of settling for a record high of $999). Netflix’s market capitalization is now north of $400 billion; remember when Blockbuster Video bought the company for $50 million?
For some more recent perspectives on the rise in Netflix valuation, fall 2021, earlier The big Netflix fixshares appeared headed for $700. After reporting a shocking loss of subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, shares of NFLX fell below $200.
It has been quite a comeback.
And media analysts see no ceiling. Well, that’s not quite accurate – it’s more like they just vaulted the roof to the roofline.
Jessica Reif Ehrlich, a research analyst for Bank of America and a regular interviewer on Netflix earnings “calls” (Netflix for many years conducted a pre-recorded video interview format and not a live call), already saw that NFLX was worth $1,000; now she’s up to $1,175.
Jason Helstein of Oppenheimer raised his own target from $1,040 to $1,150. It’s a popular price target (PT): Tim Nollen of Macquarie is at the same number, up from $965. Like Alicia Reese of Wedbush, now $200 above her previous $950 target; John Hodulik of UBS is also at $1,150, up a whopping $10 from his previous PT of $1,140.
Mark Mahaney of Evercore ISI is up from $950 to $1,100. Barton Crockett of Rosenblatt Securities is either crazy or a prophet — not to be confused with “profit,” which is what you’d do if his investment advice comes true — and raises his price target all the way from $680 to $1,494.
Someone wake up the boys at Deutsche Bank: Bryan Kraft, Spencer Amer, Benjamin Soff and Victor-A Odiwuor are at $875 a share. They’re either late to the party or just slow: DB’s previous NFLX PT was $650.
With $1,000 clearly in sight, Netflix could be headed for its first stock split in a decade. While none of this (from us) should be considered investment advice, it does make my IndieWire 401k wonder: Where can I find a time machine back to the DVD days?
