Netflix Inc. has been feeling the love lately on Wall Street, and now one analyst wonders if expectations have gotten ahead of themselves.
The streaming-media giant is in the midst of a crackdown on account sharing that seems to be working, third-party data suggest. But the broader clampdown, which kicked off in the middle of the second quarter, could yield benefits beyond the most recent period, and Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney is concerned Wall Street might have too rosy a view of how many subscribers Netflix NFLX added in the June period.
Buy-side expectations for second-quarter subscriber additions “are almost certainly higher” than sell-side ones, at about 4 million to 5 million, Mahaney wrote. Mahaney still had an outperform rating on Netflix shares, but he opened a tactical underperform call on the stock ahead of earnings, which Netflix will report July 19.