NFLX yesterday suffered its worst session since July 2016
Shares of Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) are up 3.2% at $396.84 in early trading, after Imperial Capital began coverage with an "outperform" rating and $503 price target -- the highest on Wall Street. Last week, NFLX stock rallied as several brokerage firms set $500 price targets. Yesterday, however, the FAANG stock suffered its biggest one-day drop since July 2016, following the departure of Chief Communications Officer Jonathan Friedland.
Imperial's bullish initiation was not the only positive brokerage note for NFLX today. Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger opined that the company has a "very believable" path to 90 million U.S. subscribers within the next 10 years or less, and called a recent survey "very bullish" for the streaming content provider. Meanwhile, Barclays conceded that NFLX may still be more appealing than Spotify (SPOT) stock.
The FAANG stock is no stranger to upbeat analyst attention, though. Thirty-one analysts currently cover NFLX, and nearly two-thirds offer up a "buy" or "strong buy" recommendation.
Looking at the charts, Netflix stock yesterday fell 6.5%, but found support atop its 20-day moving average. Today, the shares are paring a healthy portion of those losses, and were last seen up more than 106% year-to-date. Just last week, the stock touched a record high of $423.20.
Options traders have been leaning bullishly, with data from the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX) showing NFLX with a 10-day call/put volume ratio of 1.53, ranking in the 77th percentile of its annual range. This means that calls have been purchased over puts at a faster-than-usual clip during the past two weeks.
Lastly, the stock has consistently rewarded premium buyers, per NFLX's lofty Schaeffer's Volatility Scorecard (SVS) ranking of 86 (out of a possible 100). In other words, the stock has made bigger moves on the charts in the past year, relative to what the options market had priced in.