Go figure.
Believe it or not but after being sold off heavily in the June quarter because growth in its subscriber numbers had vanished, Netflix shares have just had their best quarter in four years.
Shares of Netflix jumped more than 34% in the September quarter, ending a three-quarter losing streak for the streamer company. It’s the best three-month period for Netflix since the first quarter in 2018 when the shares jumped 53.86%.
The streaming giant was in fact one of the top outperformers in the S&P 500 in what has been an ugly month for stocks, especially other media and streaming shares which fell sharply.
Other notable risers in the month and quarter were Constellation Energy, Enphase Energy and Etsy. They rose up 44%, 41%, and 25%, respectively.
The S&P 500 slumped more than 8% in September in one of its largest monthly falls for some years.
The S&P 500 is off 24% year to date – Netflix shares are still down more than 60% year to date (but were up by around 1.5% on Monday on the first day of the new month and quarter).
Netflix’s gains though were in stark contrast to the way shares in some of the biggest telecommunications companies were sold off, suffering their steepest quarterly declines in two decades.
Shares of wireless companies AT&T and Verizon Communications lost 26.8% and 25.2%, respectively, during the third quarter. Those were the largest quarterly percentage declines since September 2002 for both companies, according to market data.
Shares in Comcast, the big cable, TV, movie and streaming company saw its shares lose a quarter of their value in the three months to September 30.
Cable rival Charter Communications saw its stock drop 35.3% in the latest quarter, the biggest drop on record based on available post-bankruptcy data going back to 2009,
Shares in Disney which is Netflix’s major streaming rival, fell 15% which was outperformance compared to some of its rivals.
Apple shares were also down 0.5% in the quarter (but 11% in September).
…………
Shares of Occidental Petroleum rose 4.6% last week after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway added 5.99 million of the company’s shares.
The purchases were made between September 26 and September 28 and cost about $US352 million.
Following the purchases, Berkshire now owns about 194.4 million Occidental shares worth nearly $12 billion.
That’s more than 20% of Occidental and will allow Berkshire to equity account Occidental’s results.
It was the first buying in Occidental shares by Berkshire in seven weeks.
Berkshire had gone seven weeks since its last purchase of Occidental shares, which pushed its stake above 20%.
Berkshire paid in the high-$US50s to low-$US60s per share in these latest purchases.
After dropping 10% in September, Occidental’s share price has more than doubled this year, benefiting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In August, a key US energy regulator gave Berkshire permission to buy up to 50% of Occidental’s common stock.
Berkshire also owns $US10 billion in Occidental preferred stock, which generates $US800 million of annual dividends for Buffett.
So far this year Berkshire shares have fallen 10.5% and well and truly outperformed the S&P 500 which is down 24%.
