The company added 2.4 million subscribers in its latest quarter
The shares of Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX) are surging this morning, last seen up 13.5% at $273.41 following the streaming giant's third-quarter earnings results. The company last night reported earnings of $3.10 per share on revenue of $7.93 billion, both of which soared above Wall Street's estimates; however, what's really providing tailwinds this morning is the 2.4 million subscribers Netflix added during its latest quarter, more than doubling its own predictions as it reverses a trend of subscriber losses set over the last two quarters.
In response, no less than 16 analysts issued bull notes for NFLX. Deutsche Bank upgraded the shares to "buy" and hiked its price target to $350 from $270, while Evercore ISI raised its price objective to $340 from $300. Coming into today, the brokerage bunch held a bearish sentiment, with 22 analysts at a "hold" or worse compared to six "sell" or worse ratings, while the 12-month consensus target price of $266.89 was a slim 0.2% premium to last night's close.
Calls are outnumbering puts during today's trading. Within the first hour of Wednesday's session, 245,000 calls and 218,000 puts have been exchanged, which is five times the intraday average. The most popular position is the October 280 call, where new positions are being opened.
More broadly, options traders are pessimistic. At the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), the security sports a 50-day put/call volume ratio of that stands higher than 72% of readings from the past year. Echoing this, NFLX's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 1.26 sits in the 76th percentile of annual readings.
On the charts, Netflix stock is today trading at its highest level since its mid-April bear gap, and back above its 180-day moving average for the first time since January. Year-to-date, the security suffers a 57.9% deficit.