Netflix's Wall Street Trophy Makes Up for Hollywood Snub
February 10 2020 - 3:43PM
Dow Jones News
By Paul Vigna
"Oscar buzz" is for actors and directors, not stocks.
Netflix Inc. appeared to be a loser at Sunday night's Academy
Awards. The upstart studio had the most nominations, with 24, yet
it took home only two awards. In Hollywood, there is a burgeoning
debate about whether the establishment is consciously keeping
Netflix out of their club.
On Wall Street, nobody cares.
"For Netflix, getting nominated for the awards in and of itself
is validation at this point," said Justin Patterson, a senior
analyst at Raymond James.
Netflix, which began in 1997 as a DVD-rental service, has been
creating original programming since around 2013. Five years ago, it
began ramping up feature-length movies. In 2018, it started
releasing some of those movies first in theaters, before putting
them on its own service.
It has been an expensive expansion -- the company spends
billions yearly on programming. But shareholders get it. When it
comes to Netflix, "all the investment community cares about is
subscriber growth," Mr. Patterson said.
At the beginning of 2015, the company had around 62 million
subscribers, with more than 40 million of them in the U.S. At the
end of 2019, it had about 158 million, with 67 million in the U.S.
and Canada.
Those are the kinds of numbers, not Oscar tallies, that
motivates Wall Street.
Over the last five years, Netflix shares have jumped nearly
sixfold.
AT&T, whose Warner Bros. unit produced "Joker," is up 9.4%
in that same time frame. Comcast Corp., which distributed the World
War I drama "1917" through its Universal Studios unit, is up
55%.
Walt Disney Co. owns myriad Oscar winners via its Twentieth
Century Pictures, Searchlight Pictures and Pixar units -- to say
nothing of its moneymaking Marvel and Lucasfilm studios. Its stock
is up 39%. ViacomCBS, whose Paramount Pictures released
"Rocketman," is down 40%.
None of those media empires are going to be made or undone by
the fortunes of one product from one division. Then again, none of
those studios -- or even Netflix -- won the biggest prize on Sunday
night. "Parasite," a film about a poor family infiltrating the
house and lives of a rich family, won both best director and best
picture. It was produced by South Korean company CJ ENM Co., whose
shares rose 2.4% on Monday.
Write to Paul Vigna at paul.vigna@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 10, 2020 15:28 ET (20:28 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024