Is Netflix a Must-Own Stock for 2026?

• Netflix brought 2025 to a adjacent with a banal divided and a blockbuster woody to get Warner Bros.

• The acquisition carries pros and cons for the streaming leader, including the load of billions of dollars successful indebtedness to money the purchase.

• Netflix has hurdles to flooded earlier the woody tin close, specified arsenic addressing concerns that the combined entity volition clasp excessively overmuch pricing powerfulness successful the amusement industry.

• 10 stocks we similar amended than Netflix ›

Entertainment elephantine Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) made headlines this period with its bid to get astir of the assets of Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ: WBD). That projected acquisition inactive faces respective hurdles.

However, aft the deal's announcement connected Dec. 5, Netflix's stock terms fell, seemingly owed to investors' concerns astir the fiscal impacts of specified a costly purchase. The streaming giant's banal is present down markedly from the 52-week precocious of $134.12 it touched successful June.

With that stock terms drop, a perchance game-changing acquisition successful the works, and the 10-for-1 banal divided it conscionable completed successful November that made shares much accessible to retail investors, Netflix conscionable mightiness beryllium a banal to ain for the caller twelvemonth contempt Wall Street's concerns.

Warner Bros. Discovery was already readying to divided up adjacent year, putting the streaming and workplace businesses, including its monolithic contented library, HBO Max and HBO, and the video crippled concern nether the sanction Warner Bros. Meanwhile, CNN, TNT Sports, Discovery, and its different channels would go Discovery Global.

Netflix is lone funny successful buying the aboriginal Warner Bros., and it has seemingly emerged victorious successful its bidding warfare for it, but it's not retired of the woods yet. The streaming elephantine archetypal indispensable header with a hostile takeover effort of Warner Bros. Discovery successful its entirety by Paramount Skydance.

Beyond that, Netflix indispensable summation authorities support for the acquisition. That could beryllium difficult, considering the woody would harvester 2 of the largest streaming services successful America by subscribers.

Netflix absorption believes it volition prevail, stating, "Our $5.8 cardinal reverse termination fee, which is the largest currency regulatory termination interest successful a nationalist M&A transaction, shows our assurance successful our quality to get required regulatory approvals."

Even so, 1 crushed for Wall Street's absorption is the important indebtedness the streaming person volition instrumentality connected to adjacent the deal. The transaction involves a premix of currency and Netflix banal paid to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders that assigns WBD a full endeavor worth of $82.7 billion.