The Brexit carnage continued on Monday with the S&P 500 diving below 2,000 in the biggest crash in nearly a year. Internet stocks such as Netflix, Google, Priceline and Expedia were hit especially hard. However, some analysts believe all the chaos has created a buying opportunity for investors.
Expedia, Priceline, TripAdvisor hit the hardest
RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney and team noted that three stocks accounted for a large chunk of the plunge in large-cap U.S. Internet stocks. The median decline of the 13 Internet stocks they looked at was 4.08% on Friday, compared to the S&P 500’s 3.59% plunge. After excluding Expedia, Priceline and TripAdvisor, the median correction was 3.56%. Priceline in particular was hit hard on Friday as it tanked 11.37%.
They believe the correction in the travel stock was overdone, although they do see it has having the biggest exposure to Europe outside the U.K. among all the other Internet stocks. They also see several other buying opportunities across the 13 large-cap U.S. Internet stocks they cover. They explained in a report on June 26 that they believe the markets still underappreciate or underestimate the stable or secular growth potential for these stocks.
Netflix still intact post-Brexit vote
Mahaney reported that their most recent surveys from the U.S., France and Germany and two meetings with management imply to them that Netflix’s growth story is still intact. They still expect the video streaming service to post more than $10 per share in GAAP earnings by 2020, and they see its stock price doubling within the next three years. They estimate that the U.K. makes up only about 5% of Netflix’s revenue, while the rest of Europe contributes 20%. However, they add that in the last recession in the U.S., Netflix’s value proposition becomes even more attractive to consumers because it is a low-cost alternative to traditional pay-TV.
The RBC team said Google parent Alphabet has already proven that it has a lot of potential for growth. Over the last 17 quarters, the search giant’s ad revenue has grown by 20% on average. They call the company’s current valuation “particularly attractive.” They estimate that the U.K. is about 9% of Google’s revenue and profits while non-U.K. Europe is about 25% to 30%. Mahaney and team sees Google as being less defensive than Netflix or Priceline because that was the case during the 2008 recession. However, they note the long trend of strong core fundamentals.
They add that Amazon’s retail revenue has averaged 20% growth over the last 14 quarters and that it has actually accelerated over the last year.
Other stocks protected from Brexit
Canaccord Genuity analysts released their own list of stocks they see as being insulated from the Brexit shock, or “Brinsulated,” as they call them. Among the 56 stocks on their list are Pandora Media, SolarEdge, GrubHub and Zillow Group.
Like many other firms, Canaccord also expects Brexit to put the U.S. Federal Reserve’s rate hiking cycle on hold. They now expect the next hike toward the end of the year at the earliest.
They add that after looking at the full impact of Friday’s panic on underlying trends, there really weren’t any changes. Although the day brought huge moves, they said the overall trends didn’t change. Further, they said when investors trade based on panic, they use the SPY for liquidity versus individual stocks in the S&P 500. They noted that whenever the SPY against the individual stocks compared to their average activity approached Friday’s level, the market increased 12 of 14 times. The average gain they observed was 3%, with the only “meaningful lows” coming at 9% from the “mid-2002 instance,” which was the heart of the financial crisis, they explained.
Another trend they observed on Friday was a scramble for put buying as puts being purchased outnumbered calls being purchased for the first time since August 2015. Further, they explain that other than the bear markets of 2002 and 2008, there have only been 13 days when this ratio was higher than 1 the same day the S&P was higher than its 200-day moving average.
