NEW YORK, June 25, 2026, 17:01 (EDT)
- Netflix dropped 1.31% to finish at $70.90. The stock touched a new 52-week low earlier in the session.
- The stock is down about 8.4% across five sessions and has dropped 45.7% over the past year.
- Netflix is trading at about 24 times its own free cash flow estimate for 2026.
- Q2 results are due July 16, the next major update.
Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) lost 1.31% to finish Thursday at $70.90, coming close to its 52-week low of $70.86. Volume hit 44.4 million shares, topping the stock’s 65-day average. Netflix moved up to $71.33 in after-hours trading just before 5 p.m. EDT.
Netflix’s plunge from its 52-week high of $134.12 has erased around $272 billion in equity value from its $304.8 billion market cap. For investors, that move matters more than the day’s decline. That loss is nearly 90 times its $3 billion advertising sales target for 2026.
Why does it matter? The ad business is picking up speed, but it’s still a small slice of Netflix overall. The company said its ad plan accounted for more than 60% of Q1 sign-ups in markets where it runs ads. It now has over 4,000 ad clients, up 70% from last year, and still sees about $3 billion in ad revenue for this year. Even at the midpoint of Netflix’s 2026 revenue target, that’s under 6% of total sales.
Netflix is trading at around 24 times its 2026 free cash flow estimate of $12.5 billion. That’s also about six times the midpoint of its revenue forecast, which is between $50.7 billion and $51.7 billion.
Netflix’s latest stock move is shifting talk away from ad growth and more toward whether ads, fee hikes, and user numbers are enough to justify its valuation, as investors grow anxious about more deal making. Some Netflix shareholders are skittish after its failed $82.7 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. (NASDAQ:WBD), MarketWatch said Wednesday, and after reports tied the company to Roku Inc. (NASDAQ:ROKU) and Lionsgate Studios (NASDAQ:LION). “Why mess with the model?” Craig Huber of Huber Research said. SSR’s Tim Nollen added some fear Netflix is “desperate to do something big.” A Netflix spokesperson said these were “rumor and speculation,” and said the company was still “more builders than buyers.” MarketWatch
Executives at the company have worked to keep the focus on operating goals. In April, Co-CEO Gregory Peters told analysts Netflix was holding to “revenue growth of 12% to 14%” and said the ad business was “roughly doubling…to about $3 billion.” Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said a “great and growing ad business” was part of the monetization push. The Motley Fool
Q2 is the next watch. Netflix is guiding to slower growth than Q1 and expects margins below last year. The company sees Q2 revenue at $12.57 billion, up 13%. Operating margin is set at 32.6%, lower than the 34.1% margin a year ago. Netflix said growth in content amortization is heavier in the first half.
Wolfe Research’s Peter Supino stuck with his outperform rating and $107 price target on Thursday, according to Investor’s Business Daily. That target is 51% over where shares settled Thursday, giving a sense of how much the sell-side bull view has diverged from the market.
The stock trailed behind indexes in a choppy session. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.5%, S&P 500 eased 0.1%. The Dow managed a 0.1% gain, according to AP.
Netflix plans to release Q2 results and business outlook on July 16 around 1:01 p.m. Pacific. The company also scheduled a live interview with Ted Sarandos, Greg Peters, CFO Spence Neumann and finance boss Spencer Wang for 1:45 p.m. Pacific.
