Many of the world’s best media stocks have been on a tear lately, with Disney and Facebook both gapping higher in the last 2 weeks. Those stocks may now be a little overextended and the risk could be to the downside. Here are 3 media stocks that may present better buying opportunities in the coming months.
Weibo (NASDAQ: WB)
Market Cap: $15 billion
Forward PE: 18
Weibo is one of China’s largest social media platforms with over 450 million users. The share price had a massive rally between 2015 and 2018, before falling 67% between March last year and February this year. That decline came from a very overbought position, and Weibo’s chart now looks like it may be forming a 6-month bottoming pattern.
The share price may have overcorrected, and the valuation and fundamentals are now looking attractive. The company is also rapidly figuring out how to monetize its large user base and has shown impressive revenue growth over the past 5 years. Despite the share price decline, revenues have shown strong and steady growth. In addition, Weibo has demonstrated an ability to keep users engaged more than the majority of social media platforms.
Twitter (NYSE: TWTR)
Market Cap: $29 billion
Forward PE: 37
While Twitter is a massively successful social media platform, its stock has not been the greatest investment when compared to its competitors. This has caused investors to shun the stock for the most part.
However, Twitter has undertaken a major change in focus by cleaning up fake accounts and looking at monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) rather than monthly active users (MAUs).
Until recently social media stocks were all about value per user, and the easiest way to get the stock price up was to increase the number of users. Twitter’s leadership took its eye off the ball and focused entirely on overall user numbers, at the expense of just about everything else.
Now that the company is less interested in overall user numbers, but in those that use the platform, it can focus on actually monetizing those users.
The share price may look expensive with a forward multiple of 37, but that multiple will unwind quickly if the 43% consensus EPS growth is achieved for the next 5 years. The possibility of upside surprises is good too.
The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT)
Market Cap: $5.53 billion
Forward PE: 35
It’s taken a long time for any news organizations to get their audience to begin paying for online content, and very few companies have succeeded. The New York Times is one that has, which helped it grow its earnings 65% in the last year.
Consumers are coming around to the idea of paying for online content, and as the quality of free online content declines, the pool of consumers prepared to pay for quality journalism will grow. NYT’s goal is to reach $800 million in digital revenue by 2020, which will put it in a strong position.
For the most part, the print media industry is in terminal decline and most print media companies will disappear. But some will survive, including the New York Times. They will be able to buy up very cheap assets and make them work by introducing economies of scale.
This may not happen overnight, but over time, and there’s almost certain to be share price volatility along the way. Investors would do well to use that volatility to build a position. The New York Times Company is expected to report a dip in earnings growth for the last quarter, and this may prompt a deeper correction, providing one of those opportunities.
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