“Quarantine and chill” has paid dividends for Netflix and its shareholders, with the streaming giant’s stock price hitting a new all-time high on Wednesday. At the same time, the streaming giant closed the day worth $187.26 billion, narrowly pushing Netflix past Disney, which is worth $186.63 billion, in terms of valuation.
Netflix’s stock increased about 3.2% to $426..75 per share by the time markets closed on Wednesday,, topping its previous all-time high closing price of nearly $419 per share, set in July 2018. At one point on Wednesday, Netflix traded at nearly $435 per share, easily pushing past the $423.21 per share it traded for at one point in June 2018.
Meanwhile on Wednesday, Disney’s stock slumped 2.5% to hit $103.37 per share. The entertainment heavyweight has seen its film and parks businesses badly hit by the COVID-19 outbreak, and is trading well below the $148 per share it was at in early January. Disney’s share price has started to rally, at least a little bit, in recent weeks, with its share price up about 10% in the last month.
Netflix itself has been on a strong Wall Street run in the last month, with its share price surging about 40% during that time. That spike has coincided with millions of people in the U.S. and Europe being mandated to stay at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Netflix’s last month, via Google
Earlier this week, analysts told TheWrap that the main reason investors are flocking to Netflix is simple: There’s less to do right now.
“The market is correctly pricing in that stay-at-home orders mean greater consumption of in-home entertainment,” Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter told TheWrap. “Obviously we’re not going to sporting events or movies, and we’re certainly not commuting, so we have an extra couple hours a day to consume entertainment — and we are.”
Netflix has been bolstered by the release of “Tiger King,” which quickly became a pop culture phenomenon, last month, along with the return of “Ozark,” which typically debuts during the summer.
Pachter added that “churn is probably down dramatically” for Netflix in Q1, with more people clinging to their subscriptions due to fewer entertainment alternatives. This would be a case of the rich getting richer, though, since Netflix already has a relatively small problem with churn; Netflix last year had about a 5% churn rate, Leichtman Research Group recently shared with TheWrap.
Netflix is set to report its Q1 earnings next Tuesday.
