Stay-at-home plays fell on Monday and investors can expect to find some buying opportunities to appear, according to CNBC’s Jim Cramer.
Cramer pointed to the stocks of Roku and The Trade Desk as two options after shares dropped 12% and 7%, respectively, on reports of positive vaccine news in the candidate being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
He recommended investors should “buy them gradually into weakness,” citing cord-cutting to be a “powerful long-term theme.”
“People were dumping their cable subscriptions for web-based video services long before the pandemic,” the “Mad Money” host said.
The invention of the internet has disrupted nearly every industry, and the media business has gone through some of the biggest overhauls. About 25 million American households have canceled cable TV subscriptions since 2012. That number is expected to double over the next five years, leading to a projected loss of $25 billion in cable subscription revenue and related advertising spending.
By comparison, Disney announced in August that Disney+, the entertainment giant’s streaming offering, has built a 60 million-plus subscriber base, hitting a goal it set for 2024 in less than a year. The service launched in November 2019.
“In other words, Covid’s not giving these companies a temporary boost,” Cramer said. “They were already headed in the right direction, the virus simply stepped on the accelerator. The cord-cutters aren’t going to go back once they get vaccinated.”
Media companies like Disney, Comcast, AT&T and ViacomCBS, among others, have stepped up their presence in the streaming world to make up for lost business in pay-TV. Their products have crowded into a streaming environment with tough competition from the likes of Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.
Roku and The Trade Desk are two companies reaping the benefits of the transition to online media consumption, Cramer said. Roku’s platform offers consumers a way to access Netflix, Prime and other online streaming services through the television. The Trade Desk is a digital advertising company specializing in video.
Their stocks rallied last week after the companies reported strong earnings reports for the last quarter. While their share prices pulled back Monday as the reopening trade kicked in on vaccine optimism, Cramer is convinced growth is still ahead for the companies as streaming popularity continues to grow and ad spending follows the eyeballs.
“Now that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel — and I believe that — investors are dumping the Covid winners, but some of the changes from the last eight months I think will be more permanent than people realize,” he said.
“That’s why on the way down I still like Roku and The Trade Desk,” he added. “You’ve got to be careful …. [and] buy into weakness.”
Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares of Disney, Amazon and Comcast. Comcast is the owner of NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC.
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