Netflix recently announced that it would be increasing stock prices for the year. Having started at out $3.69 on December 29, 2006, the streaming company upped its price to $355.74 per share as of January 15, 2019. CNBC reports that initial investors that put in $1,000 in 2006 would have made more than $90,000 today, making the stocks at Netflix worthy of an investment.
Following the noteworthy performance of Netflix stocks in 2018, ending the year with a 39% gain, Wall Street analysts think that 2019 holds even better things in store for the company. Jim Cramer from Real Money reports that everything has been looking good for the business, particularly with the 25% advancement in stocks attained early in January.
Rich Smith from The Motley Fool state that investment banker, Goldman Sachs, recently assigned the “conviction buy” tag to the streaming company, assigning a $400 price target under its name. Goldman Sachs predicts that the streaming service could increase its shares to 48 percent by the end of the year, despite dropping 21 percent from its peak market price of $423.21 last June of 2018.
This rise in the business’ investment stock prices accompanies the $1-2 increase in subscription prices for the year. For example, the basic plan starting from $8 would now remain at $9. Following the company’s billion-dollar investments in its slew of original films and shows, it seeks to implement the biggest price hike for its subscribers.
According to Taylor Telford and Steven Zeitchik of The Washington Post, this action resulted from the efforts to finance the company’s increasing debt. This is reportedly the fourth time Netflix implemented a rise in its subscription prices, the most recent one pushed through in 2018.
Despite being in close competition with Hulu, Amazon, and Apple, Netflix remains to be one of the biggest streaming services to look out for. With 58 million strong United States subscribers, 79 million subscribers outside of the United States, and counting, Market Watch state that everything is looking good. Still, CEO Reed Hastings is set to face a growing list of competitors, with Disney slated to launch its own service this 2019.