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Netflix had a “good enough quarter,” but the way it’s running its business leaves something to be desired, widely followed tech investor Gene Munster told CNBC on Tuesday.
“It is not a good business model,” he said on “Fast Money” shortly after the streaming giant reported first-quarter earnings.
He pointed to the fact that Netflix expects its 2019 free cash flow deficit to be negative $3.5 billion.
“At $10 a month they would have to add 30 million [subscribers],” said Munster, founder of the venture capital firm Loup Ventures.
“At the current run rate, that probably puts it toward the end of 2020 before they kind of alleviate that cash burn,” he said. “Now they can do some things in terms of making some of the content costs a little bit more efficient. But I think that in general more competition is not good for that.”
Netflix reported quarterly revenue on Tuesday that beat estimates but included light guidance for the following quarter.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said he isn’t worried about the increasing competition. Last week, Disney announced its streaming service, Disney+, will be available starting Nov. 12 for $6.99 per month or $69 per year. Apple also plans a streaming service, Apple TV+, which is expected to launch this fall.
In its quarterly shareholder letter accompanying its first-quarter earnings report, Netflix wrote, “We don’t anticipate that these new entrants will materially affect our growth because the transition from linear to on demand entertainment is so massive and because of the differing nature of our content offerings.”
Munster said he isn’t necessarily concerned about the competition either; he thinks people will own multiple services.
“Netflix will do well. I think they’re going to have great market share in the U.S. and globally. I don’t necessarily believe that that’s a good stock,” he explained.
That’s because the company is overvalued, he said, and should be much smaller than its current $156.9 billion market cap.
“The more buy-side people that subscribe to either Disney or Apple … the more some of that shine gets taken off of the multiple,” Munster said.
However, right now the stock seems to want to go higher, he added. To him, that’s some indication that the international growth story is “generally intact.”
The bottom line: “We’re probably talking too much about Netflix,” Munster said.
“This stock is going to probably chop around here. The multiple could go up or down a little bit. More completion [is] coming. I think there’s just a lot better places to play in tech.”
Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
— CNBC’s Lauren Feiner and Alex Sherman contributed to this report.
