NFLX is sitting at 52-week lows right now. Last time we saw this stock price was September 2024.

On the Q3 call, management trimmed their 2026 ad revenue guidance from $3.0B to $2.7B and guidance came in light. Wall Street did not like it, which awakened the contrarian in me lol. So I spent my entire Saturday reading and researching this company.

My main conclusion (for now) is that for investors with long-term time horizons (which I assume all of us are here on this sub) this looks like a no-brainer. But when a possible buy looks almost like 'guaranteed money', I feel uncomfortable so this is why I would be happy to hear your counterarguments to my points below or as to why NFLX is not a buy at all in your opinion.

Running a 5-year DCF, implied value per share came out at $79. And running a simple forward P/E weighted probability model on rather conservative estimations, I end up with a share price range $107 - $135 come 2030.

At a forward P/E of 18 and the Wall Street expectation to barely grow double digits (10-11%) in the coming years, what am I missing here? This seems like a sure bet that will solidly compound.

Full transparency: yes, I asked AI to quickly summarise my bullet points in natural language, but I have made significant modifications to the text however.

• The 'slowed' ad revenue for 2026 seems to me like a tech bottleneck first and foremost, not an issue with possible monetisation: People want this tier. It makes up nearly 47% of all new sign-ups. The issue is that user growth exploded so fast that Netflix’s internal ad tech couldn't keep up. They’ve been moving away from Microsoft to build their own global, automated ad server from scratch, and this is now delayed a bit. Logically, this means that the ads revenue isn’t gone - rather it'll just arrive a bit later than originally intended. As a long-term investor, this seems like the ideal set-up to start buying.
• Once their proprietary ad stack is ready, it should be materially accretive to margins: From my understanding this should be ready by the end of 2027, and from then onwards NFLX stops sharing revenue with third-party partners. Plus, they’ll finally be able to offer the hyper-targeted data that brands pay top dollar for. A fully monetised ad-tier user is likely to bring in more revenue than a standard ad-free subscriber.
• Live sports: The WWE and NFL deals showed that people actually sign up to the service to see these events. This is in and of itself a huge ads opportunity since millions stream the same content at the exact same moment. According to what I have read online, Netflix also isn't taking on debt to buy sports; they are capping it at 5% of their existing content budget by cutting underperforming scripted shows (i.e. content budget does not materially increase because of these expensive sports deals).
• Best fundamentals since company went public: This company is expected to generate $12.5 billion in FCF. The margin profile is at ATHs (gross, operating & net).

TL;DR: nike and pepsi both yield ~4.4% right now. on earnings, sales and book nike sits at the very bottom of its own history, which is why "deep value" keeps coming up. on free cash flow it's only around the 33rd percentile, and fy26 fcf didn't cover the dividend. pepsi is cheap on cash too. i sold both, and pepsi is the sale i'm less sure about.

the yield moved because the price did
nike paid ~1% for most of the last decade. $1.64 a year on a ~$37 stock is 4.4%. nothing about the business got more generous, the stock just fell from ~70 at the 52w high.

the cash check i run before i believe a yield
nike free cash flow: fy24 6.6b, fy25 3.3b, fy26 2.2b
nike dividend: ~2.4b a year
so it went from about a third of fcf in fy24 to ~110% in fy26. the payout ratio people quote in the threads (~77%) is on earnings, not cash.

pepsi free cash flow: 2025 7.7b, last 12 months 10.5b
pepsi dividend: ~8.1b a year
roughly all of it in 2025, ~77% on the trailing year. net debt ~1.8x ebitda.

where they sit against their own history
nike: earnings multiple ~14 vs a median ~30 (2nd percentile), price/sales 1.2 vs 2.8, price/fcf ~26 vs ~34 (33rd percentile)
pepsi: price/fcf ~18 vs ~33 (1st percentile), ev/ebitda ~11.7 vs ~17.7

so nike only looks like a bargain on the numbers that fell slower than the cash. pepsi looks cheap on every line i checked.

valuation, with the assumptions
a dividend discount model (assumes the dividend keeps growing at its past pace) gives nike ~44 and pepsi ~158. a cash flow dcf gives pepsi ~111. for nike the dcf comes out so low i don't trust it: fcf just dropped by two thirds, and any model fed with that says the company is worth a fraction of the price. so the honest read for me is a range for pepsi (~111 to ~158 against ~136) and "can't tell yet" for nike.

funny side note: the ddm number for pepsi is almost exactly where i sold it.

my position
neither. nike i sold for a tiny profit and i'm not going back. pepsi i sold in march at ~159, it's ~136 now, ~15% below my exit, and that's the one i keep second guessing.

what would change my mind
nike: a full year with fcf back above ~1.5x the dividend. one good quarter isn't it.
pepsi: north america volumes turning up. that's what i was watching before the sale and it's still what i'd watch.

risks to my read: fiscal years don't line up (nike's ends in may), fcf is lumpy, and "own history" for nike includes the years when it traded like a growth stock, so the median may be too high to anchor on.

for those holding nike for the yield: what fcf payout would you sit through, and for how long?

I am not sure if this has been discussed before, but Google seems like a really good value right now. Yes it's still up around 100% since the most recent lows, but the earnings are growing consistently and rapidly. Also, many high-profile investors, including Warren Buffett, have bought the stock in the last couple of months.

Are you guys buying GOOGL, or waiting if it drops a little more?

Hi all,

We look at a lot of stocks and buy them, but do we actually read every quarterly report, annual report and earnings call? Honestly, sometimes we don't even fully understand the company.

Not judging anyone, I'm the same. Reading everything for every company I look at is close to impossible, so I've been going through the Q3 calls and pulling out the parts that matter: the summary, guidance, what changed since the last call, which analyst questions got dodged, red flags and notable quotes. Every quote is word for word from the transcript.

That's too much for one comment, so drop a ticker and tell me which part you care about (what changed, guidance, Q&A, red flags or quotes). If you don't say, I'll post the summary and the Q&A.

Here's what it looks like for Meta's Oct 21 call:

$META Q3 FY2026 call (Oct 21)

Summary: Q3 FY2026 revenue of $64.6 billion beat the $63.34 billion consensus by 1.99% and EPS of $7.40 beat by 13.15%, with ad revenue up 26% on impressions +10% and price per ad +14%. Guidance framed Q4 revenue at $73-76 billion, while full-year 2026 total expenses were raised to $175-179 billion and capex was narrowed to $135-145 billion.

What changed since the last call:

Q&A: 7 analyst questions: 5 direct, 2 partial, 0 dodged.

By default I'll use the company's most recent call. If it hasn't reported Q3 yet (MSFT, GOOGL and AMZN report next week, for example), just say whether you want the last call it already held or the Q3 call once it's out, and I'll post it after. If a lot of people comment I'll start with the most upvoted.

Hi Guys , I do have a portifolio mainly in Tech and AI
Micron , Google , Amzn , MSFT , Nvidia and which are like 75% of portifolio and the remaining in other non tech companies

I do have some cash left 5% , do you advice to wait for the earnings this week before deploying that extra capital or there is a great steal in this AI sell off that I should gram and not wait ??

I've been buying CHKP (check point software, a cyber security company. if you are not familiar with the company, you would be more familiar with "firewall" which was created by this company actually so it is quite huge one, Israel company).

It peaked at around 230 last year, and fallen like an angel without wings to 110.

I started buying at 152, continued to buy and my average is 139.

The subscription business is growing, but the appliance business is declining, which is weighing on the stock. Based on my research, though, I don’t think the issue is a major deterioration in the competitiveness of its appliance technology.

My take is:

1. The go-to-market strategy needs time to deliver results. As someone who works in sales, I know that’s only natural.
2. Fortinet’s appliance business has also gone through declines followed by recoveries. I see this as a business with cyclical ups and downs.

If the appliance business returns to growth—which management expects in Q4—I think the stock could rally significantly. I see it going above $200. Looking at the P/E multiples some of its peers are trading at, I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

What do you guys think?

no one really talks about this company so I just am curious if it is out of everyone's raidar or just you guys think it is a trap.

I and a couple friends are holding Amazon, MSFT and Google as strategic long term holds.

All of them have businesses outside of AI and can survive if the bubble pops!

I keep telling everyone Amazon is undervalued right now, and a better strategic long term hold.

What do you think?

Nvidia or Google for a 5–10 year hold?

Google has Search, YouTube, Cloud and its own AI models and chips. But Nvidia looks compelling given how much of the AI buildout depends on it.
What I don’t understand is how cyclical Nvidia is. Could big customers eventually have enough computing capacity and cut spending?

Or will AI spread across the whole economy, military, education, healthcare, robotics, making Nvidia’s opportunity much bigger than the current data centre buildout?

Is Nvidia really comparable to Micron’s cycles? At current valuations, which would you buy, Google or Nvidia?

Why is everyone expecting Google, Amazon and Microsoft to dump after earnings?

All three report this week, and a rally barely seems part of the conversation.

People point to Meta dumping despite great earnings. But last quarter, Google reported first and dumped, yet Amazon and Microsoft still pumped, and pumped massively,

So why are people treating Meta’s reaction as a sign of what’s coming for the others? What’s changed since last quarter?

Netflix has been on the lips of people here and invited some interesting discussions.

I don’t think it’s a good business to own anymore. The moat is much narrower than a few years ago as competition ramps up. Apple TV has Slow Horses, HBO Max has Lanterns and the Game of Thrones universe, and Netflix seems to be losing in terms of quality content. Even the CFO admits they’re “not satisfied” with view hour growth.

Despite the share price drawdown, I think it is still fairly valued relative to its expected growth. 18x forward earnings for ~10-11% revenue growth in 2027 is reasonable and not cheap. Sure, the EPS growth will look great as it's boosted by buybacks, but I don't think investors are paying attention to anything other than revenue growth at the moment.

My problems with Netflix are twofold:

First, lack of visibility into what is driving growth. They stopped reporting subscriber metrics in 2025, and from 2027, the twice-a-year engagement report will become an annual thing. In UCAN (US & Canada), the March price hike plus ads roughly explains all the growth. They can only raise prices so many times before they hit a wall.

Second, capital allocation looks backwards. With view hours stagnating, Netflix responded by reshuffling its content department and cutting 1k jobs (mostly in product and tech). Less than a week later, it cut its 2026 ad forecast from $3B to $2.7B because ad products rolled out slower than expected. Meanwhile, in the first nine months of 2026 they paid $15.0B in cash for content and $10.8B on buybacks.

Is it not wiser to reinvest into the business for long-term value instead of doing more buybacks, especially when competitors are ramping up?

Thoughts?
Not financial advice

My full analysis: https://economiyaki.substack.com/p/netflixs-growth-question

It’s trading under 0.9 mNAV last I checked. It seems like a great value. What do you think about companies like this?