A lot of investors dumped $Netflix(NFLX.US)$ stock this week after the company reported a subscriber loss and guided for a continued decline.
Ritholtz Wealth Management's Josh Brown took the other side of that trade as he sees a lot of upside opportunity in Netflix and not much downside.
"I do think that the stock has been very much de-risked," Brown said Thursday on CNBC.
Netflix shares were trading around $700 in November, he noted. Although it probably didn't deserve to be trading that high, he doesn't think it should be trading as low as it is now.
Assessing The Risk: Netflix is trading with roughly the same earnings multiple as $Walt Disney(DIS.US)$, he said: "I'm not suggesting Netflix should have a premium to Disney necessarily, but there are a lot of reasons that you can come up with for why it would and why it has historically."
The facts are that the stock is now trading at 20 times earnings with a $100 billion valuation. The company has 230 million subscribers and the next closest competitor (Disney) isn't even half the size in terms of subscriber base, he said.
The real question is how much risk is one taking buying the stock at current levels, versus the reward that shareholders will receive when things start to go wrong again. Brown doesn't think there is much risk involved in the low $200s, so he bought the stock and noted he has more capital ready to buy below $200 if it gets there and he decides he wants to add.
Potential Reward: This isn't the first time Netflix shares have been obliterated. The stock sold off on international expansion uncertainty, concerns over price increases and increased content spending, as well as on increasing competition, Brown said.
Every time the stock has blown up, if you made the bet that they would eventually get things right, as a shareholder you were rewarded not just a little bit, like richly, richly rewarded. The stock went up thousands of percentage points.
-Brown said.