Netflix Takes the Plunge into Streaming
j.a. is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.
Streaming content is going to change the face of Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) at least for the near term. Content is in high demand and unlike DVDs, there is no break for quantity or number of rentals. Netflix is in a race to acquire the most desirable programming they can afford that will secure a big enough customer base to make them highly profitable. In 2012, they had negative profits and the beginning of this shift is off to a shaky start for many reasons.
The high cost of streaming
Streaming content has a high price tag. In 2008, Netflix was able to buy 2500 titles from Starz for $30 million per year. Starz and Netflix parted ways in February 2012 when a deal could not be reached for renewal. Rumor has it Starz wanted at least $200 million per year. Starz was important to Netflix for its catalog of more current programming including movies and original content. Workaround deals with Disney and other studios directly are costly and have not replaced all titles. Even older programming on second tier networks like CW (going bankrupt before the Netflix deal) is premium priced. Netflix is reportedly paying $1 billion for 4 years of older episodes of Vampire Diaries and Gossip Girl among others.
The battle for exclusivity and new movies and television has made it a seller’s market.
Over the last five years, acquisition of streaming content has gone from $48.3 million in 2008 to $2.3 billion in 2011. Additions to the streaming content library were $765 million in Q1 2012. The total gross streaming library is now at $3.2 billion with $3.7 billion in obligations not included on the balance sheet.
In 2007, Netflix invested record capital expenditure of $223 million for DVDs (not including revenue sharing). In 2011, they spent only $85 million for DVDs. The gross DVD library is $581 million and is now largely depreciated. DVDs are largely paid for and do not consume much in investment dollars. With the cash flow from DVDs, it is a business segment worth keeping for now.
Compared to the DVD investment and gross library, streaming content is expensive and completely transforms the business model decreasing both cash flow and free cash flow. Looking at the cost of content/revenue shows how much revenue is “consumed” by the cash cost of content acquisition and is a rough measure of the efficiency of streaming vs DVD. Cost is cash cost and not additions to the streaming content library. Cash cost includes amounts found on the cash flow statement as well as a “hidden” cost in the cost of subscription from the profit and loss statement.
Cost of subscription dissected:
In millions
These numbers are not available from the company even by request (I emailed them and was told it was proprietry) and they are my estimates.
To get cost of streaming, change in liabilities is subtracted from additions to streaming content on the cash flow statement and streaming content costs from the above table are then included. The result is a higher cash cost than we find either through using amortization as a proxy or simply the cash flow statement number.
In millions
The costs have risen impressively over the past three years and the estimated Q1 cost was $445.3 million for just three months. The costs will increase sequentially every quarter according to management and 2012 spending for streaming will be a record high. It will continue to pressure margins although NFLX expects an increase in the streaming content operating margin at 2% in Q2 and 1% Q3 and Q4. I am not convinced it’s going to increase by 4% by 2013 and it should be tracked.
Content spending/revenue
Streaming content has only been an expense since 2007 and was negligible through 2010. It has steadily increased over the past four years.
In Q1 2012, streaming cash cost rose to 51% of revenue. As content costs become a bigger percentage of revenue, profit becomes more elusive turning to negative profits in Q1 2012.
Domestic subscription additions and revenue growth slowed in Q1 even as operating expenses grew. International expansion is strong but subscriber numbers are still low and the revenue generated does not support the cost of content and marketing. Netflix earnings were in the red for Q1 and the stock price suffered an extreme and entirely logical correction.
In addition to the expense of streaming content found on the financial statements (profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow statement), there is a substantial obligation coming due that does not meet the criteria for library content found in the footnotes only.
Cash flow from operations was only $19 million in Q1 2012 compared to $116.3 million in Q1 2011. Free cash flow dropped to $780,000 from $78 million in 2011. Most of the decrease was due to the increase in additions to streaming content.
Obligations
in millions
The bulk is due 2012-2015 and will be in addition to any newly acquired content. As streaming costs continue to climb and are unlikely to either flatten or decline through 2015, higher subscriber growth is the only strategy that will increase gross margins. There are no plans to tier or increase pricing.
Margins
Margins through 2011 were relatively stable. The higher spending for content was partially offset by decreased spending in shipping and handling of DVDs. Revenue and subscriber increases were high enough to maintain margins even with escalating streaming costs. That changed in Q1 2012 as margins disintegrated.
Quarterly margins
Part of the problem was slowing subscriber adds and revenue on top of rising streaming content costs.
The other hit to margins was an increase in marketing spending the last two quarters to push NFLX growth internationally. It’s easy to see why the company reached a peak share price between May-September of 2011 with the remarkable numbers it was turning in. Success now is going require international expansion. In March 2012, domestic streaming increased only 9% to 22 million subscribers and international was up 257% to 2.4 million. There is very little chance higher/tiered pricing will help revenue at least in the near term.
The future
Netflix has beat challengers into obsolescence in the past. Blockbuster folded, as did Wal-Mart’s attempt to enter the rental DVD business. The content wars are different -– bidding for programming puts the owners of content in control. Prices for premium content are subject to demand –demand is high. DVD prices were cheap and negotiable.
HBO -- part of TimeWarner (NYSE: TWX) will not let go of premium content at any price and has set up their own streaming service for original content like the enormously popular Game of Thrones. Comcast has launched Xfinity for $4.99. Starz and Netflix could not reach a deal after Starz discovered its content was worth a great deal more than $30 million per year. The new world of streaming content is more treacherous and more expensive than the rental of DVDs where Netflix was the undisputed leader.
Reed Hastings
As we move up in the content buying economic strata, you start off with kind of a low-end nonexclusive content and then as you want to get shows like Mad Men, you have to outcompete with other cable networks that get those shows in syndication and those are exclusive licenses, and so we started giving more and more of those. As we want to do direct deals with movie studios like DreamWorks Automation, the other bidders will not take that content if we also have it. So those are de facto exclusive. So this exclusive trend has been going on towards more and more exclusive and will continue as we climb the economic strata and have better and better content. It's a natural outcome of us being a network like other cable networks, all of which are exclusive against each other. I don't think we'll have all of our content and really at any point in time, because we'll continue to also have a broad range of non-exclusive content, but certainly will be more and more that is exclusive.
Outlook - Increased Seasonality in Net Adds
Netflix expects to see 15% streaming margins in Q2. They were 13.1% in Q1 (compared to 45% for DVDs). For Q3 and Q4 they are looking for 1% improvement each quarter and possibly extending it into 2013. In order for that to happen, streaming costs have to grow more slowly than revenue.
Estimates
The company guided to 7 million net subscriber additions. The gross adds are projected at around 11 million. Taking seasonality into account and adjusting for the churn, revenue increases by an estimated $535.9 million to $3.7 billion for 2012. The growth would be 17%.
Streaming content library additions were $2.3 billion in 2011 and would need to come in below $2.7 billion if Hastings is using 17% growth as a cap. Netflix already spent $765 million in Q1 leaving less than $1.9 billion in the budget for the remainder of 2012.
If cash costs are used, $926 million is the upper limit of cash left for content Q2-Q4. Using either figure does not allow for the aggressive content acquisition strategy Netflix has been using over the past year to attract customers.
If they can stay within budget, even at the high end, streaming costs/revenue would moderate to 35% and allow for the margin expansion they are looking for. I’m betting they will overspend. Popular programs and movies are expensive and they need great content to compete.
Netflix plans to continue spending on original content and that will come out of the streaming content budget leaving even less to buy premium movies and TV. They have targeted 5% spending. A high value/quality production like Game of Thrones costs $5 million per episode. For a season of 9 episodes that’s $45 million. The costs are high but well within the budget even for high quality work. Netflix may be aiming for a lower budget and less expensive production at least at first. It’s not a bad investment if they can locate good directors and quality scripts.
At 29% subscriber growth and 17% revenue growth estimated for 2012, Netflix is not the company it was. These growth rates may be the best we can expect and returns to historic numbers at 40%-60% are unlikely. The new normal may not make Netflix much of a momentum stock, but if it can continue to grow in the teens and combine that with meaningful margin expansion, $65 per share could prove a reasonable entry. Ultimate success depends on acquiring the great and often expensive programs needed to attract subscribers with a disciplined acquisition strategy that won’t destroy margins and profits. The new reality is that content owners are in control and they will be bidding up the best movies and TV as competitors scramble for exclusivity and quality that snares subscribers.
Competition
Hulu launched its first original series, and has continued its platform (Wii) and country (Japan) expansion. While we have ten times more domestic paid members, and we added over three times more domestic net additions than Hulu in Q1, we do watch them carefully. Most of their viewing, we believe, is from current-season broadcast-network content.
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) continues to grow its U.S. video content library available through Amazon Prime. We think they are still substantially behind Hulu in viewing hours. Given Amazon's size and ambitions, we continue to track their progress carefully as well.
Value
A discounted cash flow is not an exact science but can give a rough idea of value under a reasonable set of circumstances. For Netflix the subscriber number growth can be used as a reality check when looking at what number of subscribers it takes to support a certain level of revenue. If Netflix could grow at a compounded annual growth rate over 10 years of 10%, revenue would reach $8.7 billion and would require 86 million subscribers paying $7.99 per month. The company has guided to as many as 90 million subscribers—they do not mention a time frame. This is what it would take to get to almost $9 billion in revenue. To put that into some context, Netflix has grown from $272 million in 2003 to an estimated $3.8 billion by the end of 2012 – a 14-fold increase. The discounted cash flow requires a 2.7X increase in revenue and a 3-fold increase in subscribers in 10 years. It seems conservative, but the super-charged growth of the past decade will be hard to replicate under current conditions. The expenses are escalating and the competition is unrelenting.
Netflix has substantial off balance sheet streaming obligations. I decided to treat that as debt and it lowered the value just as any debt would in a DCF. It seems a fair treatment of this expense that is not captured in the current capex estimates or net income.
The value at 10% CAGR accounting for 86 million subscribers and $8.7 billion in revenue in year ten gives Netflix a value of $75 and is close to where the company trades today. It’s a long way from $300.
The streaming content obligations treated as debt decrease the value and if they are not included, the price per share climbs to $136. It is necessary to put them in somewhere. If they are ignored, the company gets this future spending for free. It is not included in either capital spending or as part of cost of sales i.e. subscription costs.
In the end, Netflix is worth what the market will pay. If the high growth story of the past resumes, $75 is low. There is nothing like momentum for taking a stock to stratospheric levels. If current conditions prevail and bidding for programming continues to drive costs and subscribers are fractured across different services, then growth will moderate and $65 represents only a slight undervaluation.
I would be surprised if Netflix in 10 years looks even remotely similar to Netfix 2012. The streaming middleman model could be replaced or at least supplemented by a Netflix that becomes part of a cable/satellite package. They could also become a heavy weight in original content if they can find financial success and a knack for creating popular programming. A model that holds them static as subscriber-only at $7.99 is conceptually flawed. I would wait to see what the company does next.
LeKitKat has no positions in the stocks mentioned above. The Motley Fool owns shares of Amazon.com and Netflix. Motley Fool newsletter services recommend Amazon.com and Netflix. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.If you have questions about this post or the Fool’s blog network, click here for information.
