(Sept 7) Netflix jumped over 2% and record high in early trading.
Days ago, Barron's reported that Netflix Stock Gets a Boost on News That It Will Stream ‘Seinfeld’.
If “content is king,” as media industry executives often say, then Netflix has a formidable kingdom with which to keep other streaming contenders at bay. As of its latest quarter, the company had some $27 billion of “content assets,” both licensed and produced.
That’s impressive. But it’s also hard to understand why decades-old content—and content whose arrival was announced nearly two years ago at that—might spur a gain in Netflix shares. This past Wednesday, after the company tweeted that all 180 episodes of Seinfeld would be available on Netflix on Oct. 1, its shares flirted with a record closing high before ending the day up 2.3%.
In 2019, Netflix reportedly paid more than $500 million to secure the rights to the series from Sony Pictures Television for five years. Talking about the deal in October 2019, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, noted that Seinfeld was one of the few television shows “that continue to be incredibly relevant” 30 years later.
“It’s kind of a comfort-view comedy that travels around the world,” he said. As the long-life successes of The Office and Friends have shown, there is clearly an audience for such “comfort-view comedy”—a viewership that is valuable to any streaming service.
Another reason that news of Seinfeld reruns might have given investors comfort: Over the original life of the show—from July 1989 to May 1998—the S&P 500 had a total return of 344%, according to Dow Jones Market Data. That’s gold, Jerry.
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