The Disney+ logo on a laptop computer
Gabby Jones/Bloomberg
Shares of Walt Disney dropped this month after the company reported slower-than-expected subscriber growth for its Disney+ streaming service. An analyst at Wells Fargo, who likened the blip to Netflix’s own short-lived subscriber stumbles, sees a buying opportunity.
Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall maintained an Overweight rating but cut his price target to $196 from $203 in a note on Monday.
He said an analysis of subscriber growth within existing markets suggests that a drop in content additions to the service matched up with the slowing pace of subscriber growth. That supports his view that Disney+ subscriber growth will speed up as the company’s content machine—which was hampered by pandemic shutdowns—revs up in the coming years.
Disney stock (ticker: DIS) fell 0.4%, to $153.34 in Monday morning trading. Shares are down 15% year-to-date but up 5% from their levels 12 months ago. The S&P 500 was up 0.3% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.7%.
Cahall said the current pullback in the stock means investors are taking a more cautious view of Disney’s direct-to-consumer efforts. But he thinks an important question is whether Disney+ isn’t as promising as initially expected, or if the current dip will prove short-lived. If it’s the latter, Cahall sees a buying opportunity.
The analyst compared it to questions about Netflix and expectations about its total addressable market, which weighed on the shares a few years ago. It was “when net adds temporarily slowed resultant of less content hitting the service,” Cahall wrote.
“Those periods proved to be great buying opportunities for NFLX investors, and we’re of the view that DIS will breakout in similar fashion once content ramps,” he said.
Cahall notes that, based on his analysis on the sum of Disney’s parts at current levels, Disney+ is now worth $150 billion less than Netflix (NFLX). He said that gap can close a bit, and suggests buying the stock.
“We don’t think the discount has been this big since DIS launched Disney+,” Cahall wrote. “While perhaps there was too much exuberance around [the Disney direct-to-consumer business’] pace of value creation early on, we can’t help but think that now the valuation discount to NFLX is looking overdone.”
Cahall isn’t alone. As Barron’s wrote in earlier this month, the company’s miss disappointed investors but the results were acceptable. After all, executives reaffirmed expectations for up to 260 million subscribers on Disney+ for fiscal 2024. The rest is just noise.
Write to Connor Smith at [email protected]
