Deutsche Bank is moving to the sidelines on shares of Netflix despite another solid quarter from the streaming giant. Analyst Bryan Kraft views the company as the “best story in media among the vertically integrated producers/programmers/distributors,” but nevertheless downgraded Netflix to a hold rating. He said that its leadership position and good news look “fully priced” in to the stock already after its 65% runup in 2023. NFLX 1D mountain Netflix pops after earnings “Netflix is trading at 32x 2024E / 27x 2025E EPS, which we see as leaving little room for multiple expansion given what we think will be peak EPS growth in 2024 (at 38%); decelerating to 21% and 16% in 2025 and 2026, respectively,” he wrote in a note Wednesday. “It is possible that our estimates could prove too low, but we don’t see step change type revisions ahead for 2024 the way we did when we upgraded the stock back in October 2022 when the market simply didn’t believe paid sharing would succeed,” Kraft added. The downgrade from Deutsche Bank comes in the wake of another strong quarter from the dominant player in entertainment media . Netflix topped revenue estimates and added 13.1 million subscribers, easily topping the 8 million to 9 million additions expected by Wall Street analysts. Looking ahead, Kraft expects advertising to be a “meaningful” contribution to revenue and profitability, and balloon to a $5 billion opportunity. But those tailwinds won’t kick in until 2025. “Advertising remains an opportunity for monetization, but it’s still early days and 2024 will be more about growing the ads tier base and building out the international sales effort than scaling ad revenue in a meaningful way,” he wrote. Along with the downgrade, Kraft boosted the bank’s price target to $525 a share, implying nearly 7% upside from Wednesday’s close, from an earlier target of $460. But Netflix is already surging 10.6% premarket Wednesday, touching $544.50. — CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed reporting.
