Key Stats for Netflix Stock
- Past-Week Performance: 2%
- 52-Week Range: $75 to $134
- Current Price: $78
What Happened to Netflix Stock?
Netflix (NFLX) fell 3.6% on February 23 as Variety reported Paramount’s revised Warner Bros. Discovery bid will likely come in at $32 per share, directly threatening Netflix’s agreed $27.75 per share acquisition and forcing investors to price in a potential bidding war escalation.
Paramount’s looming sweetened offer arrived on the February 23 deadline Warner Bros. gave Paramount to submit its best and final proposal, compressing deal uncertainty into a single trading session after Netflix had already cleared a key milestone with the March 20 shareholder vote scheduled.
The pressure on Netflix’s deal intensified because Warner Bros. retains the right to accept a superior proposal, and Paramount’s $32 per share bid would represent a meaningful premium over Netflix’s current offer, raising the likelihood Netflix must either match or risk losing the acquisition entirely.
The stock’s weakness signals a market reassessment of Netflix’s near-term cost structure, as matching Paramount’s reported $32 offer would add billions to the acquisition price on top of the $82.7 billion enterprise value Netflix already committed, straining the deal’s financial logic.
Co-CEO Ted Sarandos stated on the Q4 2025 earnings call that “we have a very healthy balance sheet and a very strong business, with or without this deal,” reinforcing Netflix’s willingness to walk away, though the company holds $9 billion in cash and retains the contractual right to match any superior offer.
Adding to the headwinds, the DOJ’s active probe into Netflix’s power over filmmakers and California AG Rob Bonta’s February 20 call for full regulatory review of the transaction introduced fresh uncertainty over whether the deal closes at all, even if Netflix wins the bidding war.
Wall Street’s Take on NFLX Stock
Despite the deal uncertainty weighing on shares, Netflix’s pending Warner Bros. acquisition remains a strategic accelerant to an already-compounding organic business that posted 15.9% revenue growth in 2025 and guides to $51 billion in revenue for 2026.
The fundamental case stays intact, with consensus estimates projecting 2026 revenue of $51.1 billion, EBITDA margins expanding to 33.3%, and normalized EPS growing 23.5% year-on-year to $3.13, reflecting a business that continues to scale efficiently with or without the WBD deal closing.
Wall Street remains broadly constructive on Netflix, with 22 buy ratings and a mean price target of $111.4 as of February 20, representing 41.6% upside from the current price of $78.67.
The spread between the street’s low target of $79 and high target of $151.4 reflects the binary nature of the WBD outcome, where a successful close accelerates the bull case while a collapsed deal could force a re-rating of Netflix’s standalone growth premium.
What Does the Valuation Model Say?
Even as deal noise clouds near-term sentiment, a mid-case TIKR valuation model prices NFLX at $158.5, implying 101.4% total return over roughly 4.8 years at a 15.5% annualized IRR, suggesting the market is significantly discounting the company’s long-term earnings power at current levels.
The primary risk is that matching Paramount’s reported $32 per share bid forces Netflix to overpay for WBD, adding material debt pressure on top of an acquisition structure already carrying $59 billion in planned debt financing, which could compress free cash flow and delay the margin expansion trajectory.
At $78.67 and trading well below both the street’s mean target and the model’s mid-case value, Netflix looks undervalued on fundamentals alone, with the WBD deal representing optionality rather than a requirement for the bull thesis to hold.
Value Any Stock in Under 60 Seconds (It’s Free)
With TIKR’s new Valuation Model tool, you can estimate a stock’s potential share price in under a minute.
All it takes is three simple inputs:
- Revenue Growth
- Operating Margins
- Exit P/E Multiple
From there, TIKR calculates the potential share price and total returns under Bull, Base, and Bear scenarios so you can quickly see whether a stock looks undervalued or overvalued.
If you’re not sure what to enter, TIKR automatically fills in each input using analysts’ consensus estimates, giving you a quick, reliable starting point.
