International news lifts Netflix stock

Netflix’s stock price has recovered from recent declines in the wake of the streaming service announcing a 130-country launch yesterday.

After two days of declines, Netflix was up 9.31% on the day, ending at US$117.68.

The US-listed SVOD service has been one of Wall Street’s star performers in recent years and was the top performing S&P 500 stock in 2015. Earlier this week, however, the stock price went into reverse, with declines outstripping those of the wider market, which suffered as China froze trading on weak output numbers.

The share price decline was driven in part by an analyst downgrade that cited concerns over slowing US subscriber growth, in turn putting added investor emphasis on its international plans.

The dramatic recovery yesterday came on the same day that Netflix announced its huge simultaneous international rollout plans. The one-day gains wiped out recent losses, returning Netflix stock to similar levels to end-2015.

Netflix hit 130 countries including India, Singapore and Turkey yesterday. Announcing the expansion at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said: “the Netflix service has gone live in nearly every country of the world but China, where we hope to also be in the future.”

Netflix said it continues to “explore options for providing the service in China”. The OTT offering now covers most other corners of the globe apart from Crimea, North Korea and Syria, which it said was due to “US government restrictions on American companies.”

CCS Insight analyst Paolo Pescatore said: “Netflix is now truly the first global online video service. This is quite an accolade within a short period of time, but the exclusion of China is notable.” He added that the expansion “lays down the gauntlet to other web giants who are increasingly looking to strengthen their presence in video on a global scale.”