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The bite is back in Netflix (NFLX), a FANG stock that had tumbled more than 20% from July 9 through Aug. 17. A disappointing second-quarter report in mid-July didn’t help.
Shares of the streaming service improved 1.6% today, on top of last week’s gains of 12%, to lift the stock to $364.58–its highest level in more than a month.
And at least one Wall Street analyst doesn’t think the recovery is over. Piper Jaffray‘s Craig Johnson told CNBC on Friday that he anticipates a “longer-trend upward.”
The stock has also attracted interest off reports that Netflix is testing a feature to bypass Apple‘s (AAPL) App Store for sign-in fees in Canada, Australia, Mexico, and Japan. The conceivable hole in Apple’s walled garden would enable consumers to pay for Netflix directly via a web page on their smartphones, thus enabling them to avoid paying Apple its cut of the fee, according to RBC Capital Markets.
The streaming service got a further boost late last week, when SunTrust analyst Matthew Thornton upgraded the stock to Buy from Hold in anticipation of new momentum in the market in India. He did, however, lower his target price to $410 from $415.
“We are encouraged in India where search data shows NFLX initial original series resonating quite well and interest in NFLX rising on an absolute basis and relative to competitors,” Thornton wrote in a research report.
Adding to its recent run of luck, Netflix said it had hired Rachel Whetstone, the head of corporate communications at Facebook (FB).
Neflix’s rebound comes as heartening news to investors still smarting from the company’s second-quarter report that showed it added far fewer subscribers than Wall Street was expecting. The company added 5 million people to bring its total members to 130 million.
Despite the recent run-up, Netflix remains well short of its all-time-record high of $423.21 set June 21.
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