October 22, 2021: -On Wednesday, CNBC’s Jim Cramer advised investors to buy shares of Netflix, arguing the stock’s post-earnings decline is creating an attractive purchase point.
“When you see Netflix pulling back after a very robust set of numbers and lots of price-target boosts, where management laid out a compelling long-term strategy, you need to look at it as a gift to buy, not sell,” the “Mad Money” host said after the streaming giant closed Wednesday’s session down 2.17% at $625.14 per share.
While Netflix beat Wall Street’s estimates on earnings-per-share and subscriber additions, Cramer acknowledged the third-quarter results were “not perfect.” He pointed to Netflix’s cautious guidance for the current period, and that subscriber additions in the U.S. and Canada were flat compared to the year-ago quarter.
“I don’t love that the business seems to be topping out in North America, but I prefer to take a glass half full approach because Netflix is killing it overseas,” Cramer said, describing the company’s Tuesday evening report as “a wake-up call for anyone who was sleeping on Netflix’s international business.”
Cramer said that investors have focused on subscriber growth as the key metric to evaluate Netflix for more than a decade. However, Cramer said he thinks monetization will be become increasingly important, noting management’s plan to grow margins in the years ahead.
Netflix also is pushing into video games, which, if successful, would deliver the company a much larger total addressable market, Cramer said. In addition, the “Mad Money” host said Netflix’s merchandising efforts related to its most popular content, such as the current smash hit “Squid Game,” maybe worthwhile even if he’d go about it differently.
On the Tuesday earnings call, co-CEO Reed Hastings “mused about how, in three years when the next sensation like ‘Squid Game’ comes out, they want to have related gaming options as well as consumer products that they could sell right out of the gate,” Cramer said, comparing the strategy to Disney. “I like it, but I’d rather have them license it,” he said.
