NFLX - Netflix, Inc.
307.29 -0.06 (-0.02%)
After hours: 7:42PM EST
| Previous close | 302.86 |
| Open | 304.70 |
| Bid | 307.28 x 1200 |
| Ask | 307.42 x 900 |
| Day's range | 302.68 - 307.85 |
| 52-week range | 231.23 - 385.99 |
| Volume | 4,268,090 |
| Avg. volume | 8,222,780 |
| Market cap | 134.696B |
| Beta (3Y monthly) | 1.30 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 98.48 |
| EPS (TTM) | 3.12 |
| Earnings date | 15 Jan 2020 - 20 Jan 2020 |
| Forward dividend & yield | N/A (N/A) |
| Ex-dividend date | N/A |
| 1y target est | 361.18 |
- Yahoo Finance
20 businesses that died in the 2010s
Yahoo Finance takes a look back at some of the biggest corporate busts of the last decade.
- Zacks
Buy Apple (AAPL) Stock on Analyst Optimism Heading into 2020?
Apple (AAPL) closed up over 1.4% Thursday after a Citi analyst predicted the iPhone maker to outperform this upcoming holiday season.
- Zacks
GTN vs. NFLX: Which Stock Should Value Investors Buy Now?
GTN vs. NFLX: Which Stock Is the Better Value Option?
- Simply Wall St.
The Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) Share Price Has Soared 534%, Delighting Many Shareholders
We think all investors should try to buy and hold high quality multi-year winners. And we've seen some truly amazing...
- Yahoo Finance UK
Watching all the biggest TV shows of 2020 will cost you £456
The biggest TV releases of 2020 could cost you over £450 in payments and subscriptions to various streaming services.
- Bloomberg
Twitter Boosts Bond, Ties for Record-Low Yield Amid Buyer Frenzy
(Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc. managed to borrow at some of the lowest costs ever in the junk-bond market as investors clamored for a piece of the technology company’s debut sale.The size of the offering was increased to $700 million from a planned $600 million after Twitter received more than $6 billion in orders for its debt, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. It ultimately sold the notes at a yield of 3.875%, matching the yield Popeyes parent company Restaurant Brands International Inc. paid to borrow in September. The coupon is the lowest for securities maturing in eight years or more in the U.S. high-yield market, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.The strong demand for the bonds shows how eager investors are to get their hands on higher paying securities, especially ones with BB tier ratings that carry less risk than lower-rated junk bonds. Double B rated notes have returned 14.1% this year through Wednesday, compared with the broader high-yield market’s 12.1% gain. Large cash-flow positive technology companies like Twitter are also a relative rarity in a market that’s become accustomed to deals from cash-burners like Netflix Inc. andTwitter and Restaurant Brands may have each other to thank for some of their junk bond market success. The fast-food operator brought its deal just weeks after Popeyes sold out of its famous chicken sandwich. Crowds descended onto stores eager to try a menu item that became a sensation on the microblogging site.\--With assistance from Gowri Gurumurthy.To contact the reporter on this story: Claire Boston in New York at cboston6@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Nikolaj Gammeltoft at ngammeltoft@bloomberg.net, Christopher DeReza, Allan LopezFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Hollywood Shows How Antitrust Laws Can Flop
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- In 1939, about 80 million Americans — more than 60 percent of the population — bought movie tickets every week. To meet the demand for fresh entertainment, Hollywood studios released new movies at the rate of one a day, 365 in all.The year’s motion pictures counted so many classics — including “The Wizard of Oz,” “Dark Victory,” “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” “Stagecoach,” “Ninotchka,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and, of course, “Gone with the Wind” — that 1939 is often called Hollywood’s greatest year.A decade later the studio system that produced these touchstones and made movie-going an everyday pastime was largely gone — destroyed by a combination of antitrust action and marginal tax rates that reached 90 percent for the industry’s well-paid salaried employees.In its place, Hollywood adopted an early form of the gig economy, with project-based contracts and profit participation, taxed at lower capital gains rates, instead of steady employment.A winner-take-all system of star talent and blockbuster bets replaced the diverse ecology of working actors, staff writers, B-movies and cheap tickets at second- and third-run theaters. Film rental and ticket prices rose, the number of films produced fell, and, by 1950, the number of actors and directors under contract had plummeted to a third of what it was at its height. (Unions offered benefits and some protections, but in 2018, to take one example, only 6,057 of the 20,000 members of the Writers Guild of America West earned any income.)Today, as a resurgent left, sometimes joined by the populist right, demands a return to punitive taxes and blunderbuss enforcement of U.S. antitrust laws, the Hollywood experience offers a timely reminder of how economic crusaders can destroy what they don’t understand. By hampering creativity and increasing risk, ill-informed antitrust action can ultimately harm the consumers it is supposed to protect.Last month, the Justice Department filed a motion to drop the Paramount consent decrees that have governed most of the movie industry for more than 70 years. The rules have prevented studios from owning theater chains and imposing film rental terms that antitrust enforcers deemed anti-competitive. (Disney, which was not involved in the original case, is exempt.)Times have changed, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim said in a speech to the American Bar Association. We no longer have to worry about practices such as “block booking,” in which a studio bundles its releases to a given theater.“Today, not only do our metropolitan areas have many multiplex cinemas showing films from different distributors, but much of our movie-watching is not in theaters at all,” said Delrahim, who oversees the Justice Department’s antitrust division. These days, the most prolific studio in Hollywood is Netflix.Delrahim only hinted that the antitrust cases might have been misguided even in their own day.“It is important,” he said, “for antitrust enforcers to recognize the risks of misapplying antitrust law in creative fields that experience significant change.” He was talking about today’s tech companies, but he could have been referring to movies on the cusp of the television era, when a landmark Supreme Court ruling forced movie studios to divest themselves of their theater chains.The vertical integration and licensing contracts that regulators interpreted as monopolistic actually dated back to the wildly competitive early days of feature films in the 1910s, when producers evolved effective ways to deal with risks and uncertainties specific to their business.Each movie is a unique product requiring a large upfront investment. Nobody knows whether it will succeed until people see it, and even popular films can take time to build an audience. All these factors led studios to emphasize long-term relationships and multiple-film licensing deals with “greater flexibility than the short-term, one-picture, one-theater contacts that the courts prescribed in the decrees,” write economists Arthur De Vany and Ross D. Eckert in a 1991 article in Research in Law and Economics.Take the studios’ use of block booking. Los Angeles Times reporters Ryan Faughnder and Anousha Sakoui recently described it as “essentially telling cinemas they had to take the studios’ likely flops if they wanted the hits.”This common characterization misses the point. Before movies hit the screen, no one knows which ones audiences will embrace. Producers surely had high hopes for “Charlie’s Angels” and “Terminator: Dark Fate,” to take a couple of recent disappointments, while “Joker” surpassed expectations.Rather than a nefarious plot to foist lousy flicks on unwilling exhibitors, block booking permitted cinemas to buy in bulk. The practice evolved in the 1910s as a way to keep theaters supplied with enough movies to change their offerings as often as twice a week. As more costly talkies emerged in the 1920s, contracts shifted from straight rentals to revenue-sharing deals.Regardless of the structure, “block booking was simply intended to cheaply provide in quantity a product needed in quantity,” writes economist F. Andrew Hanssen in a 2000 article in the Journal of Law and Economics. Cinema owners didn’t want to run around shopping for movies to show.They said as much at the time. ‘‘The exhibitor is in the position of buying a sufficient quantity of quality product for his theater to insure a continuous supply of merchantable pictures,” declared the exhibitors’ trade association in 1938. “To quit block booking would be to greatly increase the price of pictures.’’Besides, duds don’t seem to have posed a major problem. Examining contracts between Warner Bros. and independent cinemas in the Long Island area, Hanssen found that theater owners canceled fewer movies than their contracts allowed and ran them for longer than the minimums required — not the choices that dissatisfied customers would make.Block booking was also one of several ways studios avoided the biggest potential risk for a movie producer: having no place to show a film. Studio-owned theaters were another way to reduce this risk. Most were ordinary theaters that showed movies from a variety of studios.In a 2010 article in the Journal of Law and Economics, Hanssen analyzed booking sheets from Wisconsin cinemas owned by Warner Bros., a rare source of information on both how long a film was supposed to play and how long it actually did play. He compared these records with the film runs advertised for independent cinemas in the New York Times, using Sunday ads for the projected runs and tracking actual runs in the daily paper.He found that the studio-owned theaters were more likely than independent cinemas to drop films before their minimum runs were over, usually substituting a movie from a different vertically integrated studio for the original. The evidence suggests, he says, that the antitrust case’s Big Five studios were in fact colluding — but not in the way regulators feared.“The cooperation allowed film companies to better match films to audiences so that consumers could see more of the movies they valued most,” Hanssen writes.Antitrust enforcers hated the way studios rolled out their movies, with first runs reserved for the best theaters, followed by second-, third-, fourth- and even fifth-run venues, with rental prices getting cheaper as time went on. Nearly three-quarters of first-run theaters were owned by the studios — a statistic the Supreme Court cited as damning in its 1948 ruling in favor of the antitrust action.With the consent decrees in place, thousands of theaters upgraded to first-run showings, the number of discount cinemas fell, and simultaneous releases replaced gradual rollouts. The new pattern gave each new film less time to find an audience.“Earnings per screen in a first-run booking decline faster and generally are lower under a wide-release pattern, so more widely shown films have shorter runs,” observe De Vany and Eckert. One result was a decrease in the variety of films, with an increasing emphasis on big-budget pictures. Another was stricter enforcement of minimum run requirements, even for obvious flops.“It is argued that the steps we have proposed would involve an interference with commercial practices that are generally acceptable and a hazardous attempt on the part of judges unfamiliar with the details of business to remodel its delicate adjustments which have hitherto provided the public with what is a new and great art,” wrote the U.S. District Court in its Paramount decision, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court. “But we see nothing ruinous in the remedies proposed.”Hollywood did indeed survive. But neither theater owners nor studios nor the moviegoers were well served by the results. “Nothing ruinous” is an awfully low standard.To contact the author of this story: Virginia Postrel at vpostrel@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Katy Roberts at kroberts29@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Virginia Postrel is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She was the editor of Reason magazine and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the New York Times and Forbes. Her next book, "The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World," will be published in 2020.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
CBS and Viacom Are Still Selling Wall Street on Their Deal
(Bloomberg) -- Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. completed their merger on Wednesday, ending three years of on-and-off talks and creating what they boast is an entertainment colossus without peer. The hope is that the combined company, rechristened ViacomCBS Inc., will spit out hit TV shows and movies faster than you can say Netflix.But Wall Street has been skeptical. Shares in both companies have tumbled more than 14% since they announced plans to combine in August, erasing billions of dollars in market value. Shareholders of CBS have sued the company in Delaware, alleging the merger only benefits its controlling shareholder, National Amusements Inc., the movie-theater chain owned by the Redstone family.The shares began to rebound on Wednesday, a sign that investors are finally warming to the deal. But ViacomCBS still has a long way to go before winning over skeptics.Even media analysts, typically a staid and supportive bunch, have questioned the logic of the deal. Michael Nathanson, co-founder of Moffett Nathanson LLC, dubbed an October filing that outlined details of the merger “an abject disaster.”That wasn’t the reception Shari Redstone was hoping for when she began agitating for a merger of the two companies back in 2016. That was when she supplanted her father, Sumner Redstone, as the public face of a family business with a clear goal: reunite the two companies that her father split apart in 2006.Wall Street was mixed on the deal at the time, but saw the logic for Viacom. The owner of MTV and Nickelodeon was losing teenagers to Netflix, advertisers to YouTube and confidence among its own employees. Combining with CBS would give the combined company the heft to negotiate better deals with pay-TV operators and advertisers.CEO ClashesYet the family met resistance from the leadership of both companies, leading to legal disputes with both Viacom chief Philippe Dauman, her dad’s old lawyer, and CBS boss Les Moonves, a TV industry legend. Dauman was fired in 2016, and Moonves was ousted last year after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct.Now that the merger is finally a reality, it looks late -- and the combined company looks small. ViacomCBS has a market capitalization of about $20 billion, a fraction of heavyweights Walt Disney Co., Comcast Corp., AT&T Inc. and Netflix Inc. Its $27 billion in annual sales is a fraction of all those companies but Netflix, which is growing at a much faster rate.Redstone would prefer investors look at another number: the $13 billion that the two companies are spending annually on TV shows and movies. That figure puts ViacomCBS in the same league as the biggest entertainment companies in the world, and speaks to what Redstone and Viacom chief Bob Bakish have said is a differentiated strategy. While AT&T, Comcast and Disney trip over one another to create their own Netflix, ViacomCBS will sell to all of them.Viacom’s Paramount produces “Jack Ryan” for Amazon, while Nickelodeon just signed a deal to make programs for Netflix. CBS both produces “Dead to Me” for Netflix and several shows for its own streaming service.Shares RallySome investors are coming over to their way of thinking. Viacom rallied the most since May on Wednesday, climbing as much as 6.1%. CBS rose as much as 6.2%. Both stocks came off their highs by the close, each rising more than 3%. ViacomCBS begins trading under the symbols VIACA and VIAC on Thursday.“It’s somewhat frustrating the way the stocks have traded; it’s like there are no believers out there,” said John Miller, a senior vice president at Ariel Investments, which holds stock in both companies. “We continue to believe this merger makes complete sense.”Miller said he expects “unbelievable” political advertising revenue in the 2020 election cycle, and said the companies are bringing together valuable programming. “The combination will make both companies stronger,” he said.Still, the combined company’s strategy remains confusing to many. At the same time it licenses “South Park,” one of its most popular programs, to AT&T’s HBO Max, ViacomCBS will maintain its own streaming service, All Access. The spending on original programming for All Access and Showtime is what prompted Nathanson to use the phrase “abject disaster” in the first place. The cash burn from that spending exceeded his forecast.Tough SpotBakish, who will run the combined company, is in an unenviable position. He doesn’t want to give up on the money he can get licensing programs to streaming services starved for hit shows, but he can’t forgo the world of streaming altogether. Wall Street has rewarded Disney for taking on Netflix head-to-head, but it is in the unique position of owning Marvel, “Star Wars” and Pixar.Investors’ concerns don’t stop there. They expected more cost synergies. They wanted more insight into how the two companies would benefit one another. Press appearances from Bakish have done little to assuage their concerns.But competing on the internet is not the only -- or even the main -- rationale for doing the deal. It does create a formidable TV company that will own the most-watched U.S. network, the most-watched kids’ TV network, one of the major Hollywood studios and a premium cable network in Showtime. All together, they will command more than 20% of TV viewing and the largest audience in almost every demographic of any company.“It’s a reach story,” Bakish told Bloomberg News in an interview the day the deal was announced. “We will have the largest TV business in the U.S. on a combined basis, and it strengthens our position to create value.”Bakish, Redstone and the leadership at CBS all say they’re convinced this deal is a no-brainer. Now they just need to convince everyone else.(Updates with deal’s completion in first paragraph, shares in 11th paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Lucas Shaw in Los Angeles at lshaw31@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, John J. Edwards IIIFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Yahoo Finance
Alphabet will be fine without Larry Page and Sergey Brin: analysts
D.A. Davidson senior research analyst Tom Forte said long-standing Google executive Sundar Pichai was the right choice to take over Alphabet.
- Zacks
Market Volatility Strikes Again
It's time to play catch up. We Discuss trade talks, Google Founder's stepping down, Apple Innovation and Streaming wars. I know its a lot!
- Yahoo Finance
The stock market's biggest winners and losers of the past decade
With the 2010s officially drawing to a close, Yahoo Finance took a look at some of the biggest S&P 500 winners and losers of the past decade based on price returns.
- Bloomberg
Twitter’s Rare Pitch to Junk Market: Profitable Tech Issuer
(Bloomberg) -- As it prepares its debut in the junk-bond market, Twitter Inc. is employing a strategy that looks downright quaint for a high-flying technology firm: making money.The social media company, which posted $856 million of free cash flow last year, can expect to be rewarded for its prudence. It garnered credit ratings in the top tier of high-yield and is marketing its $600 million deal at a yield of around 4.5%, more than a percentage point lower than average for speculative-grade debt.Its approach stands in contrast to companies like WeWork and Tesla Inc., both of which issued junk bonds while burning cash and have seen their notes underperform. Even Netflix Inc., which has become something of a bond-market darling after issuing billions of dollars of debt to help fund new programming, isn’t cash-flow positive.Twitter’s financial profile may not resemble some of its cash-burning peers, but it does emulate the kind of company investors have been most eager to lend to this year amid fears of a broad economic downturn. Jittery debt buyers have helped notes issued by the highest-quality junk borrowers return some 14%, outperforming riskier securities like CCC rated debt.“It’s an up-in-quality trade across all asset classes,” said John McClain, a high-yield portfolio manager at Diamond Hill Capital Management. “Nobody wants to be caught with their hand in the cookie jar. This is the cookie jar moment.”Twitter’s previous forays into debt markets have primarily been via convertible notes, a type of hybrid security that pays interest, like bonds, but can be exchanged for stock after a company’s shares rise above an agreed-upon price.Historically they’ve been popular with fast-growing technology companies that may lack the credit grades necessary to drum up support in traditional debt markets. Tesla was also a convertible issuer before it debuted in the junk-bond market.Unlike equity investors that typically prioritize a company’s growth, bondholders care most about getting paid back, and are therefore often wary of lending to cash-burning companies.Yet a relentless demand for higher yielding assets in recent years has allowed more and more money-losing firms to access debt financing, led by Netflix. The company has become a regular issuer in the U.S. and European markets, benefiting from investor confidence that it will ultimately become cash-flow positive as it pares back spending on new programming. That’s helped push the company’s debt above par.Newer technology issuers hoping to replicate Netflix’s approach have had varying levels of success. Tesla sold bonds in 2017 to ferocious demand, only to see the debt sink to as low as 81 cents on the dollar as investors fretted that the electric carmaker couldn’t find a sustained path to profitability. The notes have rallied to around 96 cents after the company posted two consecutive quarters of positive cash flow.Uber Technologies Inc. has fared better, having tapped the high-yield market twice despite failing to regularly post a profit. Both of those offerings trade around or above par. Meanwhile, WeWork has become something of a worst-case scenario for debt investors. Its $669 million of junk bonds trade at distressed levels after the company canceled its planned initial public offering and teetered on the brink of insolvency before accepting a bailout package from backer SoftBank Group Corp.Investors eyeing the Twitter deal have to assess whether the company can garner Netflix-like traction in the bond market, or if its short history of growth and positive cash flow could quickly reverse.Moody’s Investors Service analyst Neil Begley, who rated the deal the second-highest junk grade, said in a statement that the company has demonstrated “strong revenue growth and free cash flow generation,” but cautioned that “Twitter is small relative to its larger digital advertising and social networking competitors, and user engagement on social networks can be fickle.”Even some higher-rated, cash-generating technology companies have stumbled. Food delivery platform GrubHub Inc. sold a debut bond in June to enough demand that it increased the size of the offering. But since issuing the debt, it’s struggled to deal with slower growth amid fierce competition in the industry. S&P Global Ratings downgraded the notes in October, and they now trade at about 92 cents on the dollar, down from as high as 105 three months ago.“When you engage with the high-yield market, you have to have positive Ebitda and at least a path to cash flow breakeven to even have a discussion,” said John Yovanovic, global head of high-yield at PineBridge Investments, referring to the widely followed metric of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. “We’ll approach this one with the scars we learned from GrubHub of what could happen.”(Adds GrubHub bond-price comparison in penultimate paragraph)\--With assistance from Paula Seligson.To contact the reporters on this story: Claire Boston in New York at cboston6@bloomberg.net;Molly Smith in New York at msmith604@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Nikolaj Gammeltoft at ngammeltoft@bloomberg.net, Boris Korby, Natalie HarrisonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Yahoo Finance
Why Apple shouldn’t get into the movie theater business
Apple should focus on producing content, not physical theaters, analyst says.
- Yahoo Finance
Trump uses flamethrower on bullish investors again and serves up one valuable investing lesson
President Trump's latest comments on the trade war front should serve up a valuable lesson to investors.
- Yahoo Finance
Why the 2010s were a decade divided
America is a nation at odds with itself, a state of affairs that has come to pass mostly over the previous 10 years.
- Bloomberg
Why on Earth Is Roku’s Stock So Ridiculously Expensive?
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- You’ve just witnessed the semi-annual Roku Inc. sell-off. It’s the time of year when investors come to the abrupt realization that they’ve probably paid too much to own shares of the high-flying streaming-TV company, as if valuing anything at 300 times Ebitda were ever rational. Here’s how it usually goes down: An equity analyst downgrades Roku, sending the stock into a tailspin, which leaves onlookers wondering what terribly bad thing occurred at the company — or what a Roku even is. This time, that analyst was Benjamin Swinburne of Morgan Stanley. He cut his rating to the equivalent of a “sell,” and oh, did the market listen: Roku plunged 15% on Monday for one of the Nasdaq’s worst post-Thanksgiving showings.But what changed the last few days between carving the turkey and putting up the Christmas tree? Nothing, really. In fact, Roku’s stock price is still up 344% for the year, and it’s still the most popular streaming-TV device. As of last week, the company was valued at a whopping 322 times analysts’ forward 12-month Ebitda forecasts. Swinburne’s report explained that while Roku’s strategy is sound, its sky-high valuation is unjustified given that revenue growth is projected to slow.When several other analysts gave a similar word of caution in April, it sparked a sell-off then, too. But just as I noted at the time, it’s not that Roku’s business prospects were suddenly and dramatically altered; it’s more a function of an overheated stock price. If you think a perpetual cash-burner like Netflix Inc. is pricey, keep in mind that Roku’s own Ebitda multiple is still almost 10 times higher, even after Monday’s drop:Part of the problem is that in the bewildering market for streaming-TV services, it’s difficult to grasp what Roku does and to hedge what its role will be in the streaming wars. And certainly the $1.7 billion of short interest in Roku shares (per S3 Partners data) adds a degree of pressure to its trading price.Roku is fighting the giants of the streaming world on two fronts. It sells hardware and provides software that’s pre-installed on certain television sets, all of which allow users to access their video-app subscriptions, such as Netflix, Disney+ and CBS All Access in one place. Roku is also competing for advertising dollars through the ad-supported Roku Channel, which is less of a channel in the traditional cable-TV sense and more of a hodgepodge of free movies and shows for cord-cutters looking to save money. Roku devices accounted for 44% of all connected-TV viewing hours in the latest quarter, while Amazon.com Inc.’s Fire TV is in a distant second place with a 20% share, according to Conviva, an industry analytics firm. That’s a strong lead, but competition will intensify. The next frontier in streaming is offering bundles that help solve the consumer pain point of needing to pay for multiple apps individually. Eventually, users will gravitate to platforms with this capability. Comcast Corp.’s Flex platform, I argued last month, may be a step toward bundling streaming services in the way the cable giant packages traditional TV channels and its other services. Apple Inc.’s Apple TV Channels already allows users to subscribe to select apps on an a-la-carte basis through their Apple IDs. But the warnings about the growth outlook require a bit of context: We’re talking about a business that increased revenue by 50% in the third quarter and is projected to do so again this quarter. A slowdown from that level would still be a dream for many corporations its size. “Roku reported a strong quarter for just about any company but Roku,” is how Alan Gould, an analyst for Loop Capital Markets, put it in a note to clients last month. Roku also added 1.7 million active accounts — that’s almost the same number of people who quit traditional pay-TV services such as Comcast’s Xfinity, AT&T Inc.’s DirecTV and Charter Communications Inc.’s Spectrum in the same period. And if Roku’s $16 billion market value shrank enough, an acquirer might just swoop in for the company and all those users and TV-manufacturer relationships.So things aren’t quite as bad for Roku as one might infer from Monday’s plunge. They really aren’t bad at all. But Roku’s the small fry in a land of giants, and even if it doesn’t get trampled, its lavish stock price will keep taking hits.To contact the author of this story: Tara Lachapelle at tlachapelle@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Beth Williams at bewilliams@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Tara Lachapelle is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of entertainment and telecommunications, as well as broader deals. She previously wrote an M&A column for Bloomberg News.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Investing.com
StockBeat: Netflix Falls on Downgrade as Analyst Says Valuation Too Hot
Investing.com – Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) needs to up its subscription prices in order to justify its current valuation, which is running too hot, Citigroup (NYSE:C) said as it cut its outlook on the streaming-media giant.
- Bloomberg
Junk Bonds Are a Haven in a Twitter Storm
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Twitter Inc. is joining its peers in the Big Tech club by issuing regular corporate debt. It’s bringing an inaugural high-yield bond this week to raise $600 million at an eight-year maturity.This is a somewhat unusual issue because the social media company doesn’t really need the money; this is more about sending a message of stability to the markets — that it can raise financing with ease. Given the sharp fall in the company’s shares this year after it reported disappointing revenue in October, it seems to be a wise approach. With almost $6 billion of cash on its balance sheet, a market cap of $23.6 billion and just $2.1 billion of existing debt, the bond market will no doubt welcome the new junk bond with open arms, regardless of Twitter’s poor equity performance.It’s the perfect illustration of how debt markets differ from the stock market in how they perceive value. All fixed-income investors really care about is a company’s creditworthiness so that the coupon payments are maintained and the principal outlay can be repaid.Uber Technologies Inc. and Netflix Inc. have raised substantial bonds recently, and Twitter’s $600 million deal is comparatively modest. But the new issue market for junk bonds is on fire this year because of investors’ relentless hunt for yield. Credit spreads (the difference between corporate and benchmark yields) have fallen substantially in line with the drop in government yields. There has rarely been a better time to issue debt.And as Twitter is at the less risky end of the junk bond spectrum — one notch below investment grade, according to S&P Global Ratings — it will probably go into most major high-yield bond indexes. As a new name for credit investors, it will no doubt benefit from bond-buyers looking to diversify their holdings.Twitter has relied previously on the convertible bond market for financing, successfully taking advantage of the share price’s high volatility (hedge funds are happy buying this type of paper knowing that it’s a cheap way of buying volatility). But the sustained drop in the stock price since that October earnings miss means it needs to explore alternatives. Its longest-dated debt, a $1.15 billion 2024 convertible bond with a 0.25% coupon has an implied credit spread of 300 basis points, but Twitter will probably improve on this in the more liquid conventional bond market.Twitter’s business may have been struggling, but this issue should go sweetly.To contact the author of this story: Marcus Ashworth at mashworth4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Marcus Ashworth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering European markets. He spent three decades in the banking industry, most recently as chief markets strategist at Haitong Securities in London.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Reuters - UK Focus
LIVE MARKETS-Tariffs tit-for-tat: Luxury brands are the French FAANGs
Welcome to the home for real-time coverage of European equity markets brought to you by Reuters stocks reporters and anchored today by Julien Ponthus. Reach him on Messenger to share your thoughts on market moves: julien.ponthus.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net TARIFFS TIT-FOR-TAT: LUXURY BRANDS ARE THE FRENCH FAANGS (1114 GMT) Is Washington's threat to slap hefty tariffs on French luxury goods a perfect tit-for-tat? Luxury stocks such as LVMH, Kering and Hermes are all down 1.3% to 2% this morning after the U.S. govt threatened 100% tariffs on $2.4 billion of imports from France in reply to Paris' digital services tax that would hit the likes of Google or Facebook.
- Yahoo Finance UK
Champagne to cheese: US prepping $2.4bn of tariffs on French goods
Items that face tariffs at rates up to 100% include make-up, cheese, and handbags.
- Zacks
Netflix (NFLX) Dips More Than Broader Markets: What You Should Know
Netflix (NFLX) closed at $309.99 in the latest trading session, marking a -1.48% move from the prior day.
- Yahoo Finance
Where you should invest your money in the next decade: strategists
Here's how to think about investing over the next decade.
- Reuters
Roku tumbles 15% as Morgan Stanley warns of streaming 'exuberance'
Roku Inc's high-flying stock tumbled 15% on Monday after Morgan Stanley downgraded the video streaming company, warning that revenue and profit growth could slow next year. A major winner in the consumer shift away from cable television in favor of Netflix and other streaming services, Roku's stock has gained more than 300% in 2019, even after Monday's slump.
