Following Price Hikes, Netflix Adds Stock Price Gains

Few media companies could keep pace with Netflix’s two-day stock-market gains. They followed Thursday’s announcement of an average 8% price hike for all its consumer monthly OTT digital TV packages.

The subscription video-on-demand platform, which boasts 51 million subscribers, closed up 2% on Friday at $198.02, after a 5.4% gain on Thursday.

Only OTT set-top box distribution platform Roku, with 15.1 million U.S. users, was able to keep pace -- picking up 11% over the same two-day period, settling at $23.20. Roku’s stock grew 5.4% on Friday.

Many media stocks moved in the other direction on Friday. CBS was down 1% to $58.30, while 21st Century Fox inched up 0.6% to $26.47 and Walt Disney was virtually unchanged at $100.07. Viacom lost 0.6% to $27.15 and Discovery Communications was down 0.5% to $21.41.

Looking at pay TV providers and TV station groups, Dish Network dropped 1.3% to $53.33, while Charter Communications was down 0.6% to $367.40, Altice USA was off 1.1% to $27.93, Sinclair Broadcast Group was unchanged at $32.25 and Nexstar Media Group slipped 0.6% to $62.70.

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Digital media had more mixed results, with Twitter slipping 2.2% to $17.85, Facebook up 0.6% to $172.23 and Google gaining 1% to $978.89.

Netflix's price hike is around 8% on average for all its plans, according to Barton Crockett, media analyst at FBR & Co.

John Janedis, media analyst at Jefferies, estimates that 75% of Netflix’s U.S. subscribers currently subscribe to its standard plan of $9.99 a month (rising to $10.99) and 15% subscribe to Netflix’s premium $11.99 plan (increasing to $13.99 a month); with 10% subscribing to Netflix's basic $7.99 plan (which will remain unchanged).

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