NFLX是一个有趣的故事，滑稽而且愚蠢。

现在，一口气下跌了80%的股票值得你投资吗？

这里有好几个问题：

其一，他会不会被竞争者打败？就此一蹶不振？历史上这样的例子太多了；

其二，它剩下的资产到底有多少价值？是不是值得像亚马逊这样的公司购买？

其三，如此低劣的错误，为什么会一个接着一个。虽然公司的管理层有很多借口。那么，能够犯这类错误而且还是一个接一个的管理层，真的能够在一夜之间变聪明吗？

这家公司的股票价值，还是得由公司未来的盈利能力来决定。你敢赌一把吗？

Down 79% From Their July High, Netflix Shares May Be a Buy

Technology Trader

 | SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2011By TIERNAN RAY | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

Whitney Tilson says Netflix stock could double in a few months, and the downside from here, he says, is low.

Netflix, the video-rental and online pioneer, is loved by many, including yours truly, for its little red envelopes in the mail containing movies great and obscure, and for its trove of films you can watch over the Internet.

But lately it has also become "the BP of 2011," says Whitney Tilson, head of hedge-fund firm T2 Partners, referring to the petroleum giant that poisoned the Gulf of Mexico last year.

Netflix (ticker: (NFLX) is toxic.

Its shares have fallen 79% from a high of $304.79 hit on July 13 to just $63.86 Friday.

Tilson, who used to short Netflix, turned positive on the stock in October. He reaffirmed his faith last week in an e-mail to followers, even as Netflix again saw its stock hammered after it announced a dilutive capital raise.

In a phone conversation last week, Tilson told me Netflix is like BP in that it is a "mispriced option," one that could soar if things improve even just a little.

BP, you have to know, made Tilson a bunch of money. He bought the stock in the summer of 2010 as it careened from $60 down to $27, and he then made a 50% profit in a matter of six weeks as the shares recovered from the worst fears about the Gulf.

Netflix, on a far more prosaic level, is suffering from a bruising series of management flip-flops this year, and a tone-deaf communications style that has turned the former darling of Wall Street into a dog.

COULD NETFLIX NOW BE CHEAP enough to buy?

At its July high, the stock fetched 65 times this year's projected profit per share and five times revenue. It now trades for just 16 times this year's projected EPS and one times revenue. Netflix is cheap, in other words. Tilson thinks that the stock could double in a couple months with some good news.

Netflix's fall this year has been death by a thousand cuts. The company in July decided to double the price of its basic plan, which allows for unlimited online video and the receipt of one DVD in the mail at a time. That move caused massive subscriber defections. The company's cancellations in the third quarter ending in September jumped by nearly 60% as 5.5 million people walked away.

Netflix compounded its foolishness two months later by splitting its DVD business into a separate unit and rebranding it Qwikster, a decision it later rescinded after substantial ridicule from all corners.

The latest misstep involved the pricing of $400 million worth of convertible debt and common stock, announced Tuesday. Part of that consists of $200 million in bonds that the company will sell to Technology Crossover Ventures, already a heavy investor in Netflix, with 28% of the shares outstanding. Those notes have a conversion price of $85.80, about 60% less than the company paid to repurchase its own shares earlier this year.

Ouch! That's bitter black humor for those who stuck with the stock as it crashed.

To add insult to injury, Netflix now expects to incur losses for the full year 2012 as it rolls out its streaming video service internationally.

Netflix, which first began streaming TV shows and movies over the Internet in the U.S. in 2007, expanded to Canada last year and to Latin America two months ago. It plans to roll out the service to the U.K. and Ireland next quarter.

In response to the dour new outlook, analysts cut their estimates: This summer analysts expected Netflix to make $4.68 per share in 2011, and $6.95 next year. It now looks as if the company will end up making $4.08 this year and might, at best, make a profit of 75 cents in 2012, even when the cost of stock options is excluded.

One result of all these gyrations is that the credibility of CEO Reed Hastings and his team has been harmed. Hastings famously sparred with Tilson last December on the investing Web site Seeking Alpha. At the time, Tilson was short the stock and deeply critical.

Tilson warned of rising content costs, but Hastings respectfully replied that "we have no intention of overspending, relative to our margin structure."

That is, however, exactly what the company has done as evidenced by the company's expectation that it will lose money in the next few quarters. "Netflix has clearly shot itself in the foot a couple times in the last few months," Tilson observes.

On the other hand, he thinks that the company has learned some lessons and has "gotten religion," as he says.

T2 has invested about 4% of its $150 million portfolio in Netflix, says Tilson.

Tilson's bear thesis, he told me, had been based on the belief that Netflix's high fixed cost to acquire content meant that it would have to make one of three very painful decisions: Cut back on content, raise prices or invest more and hurt profit.

HASTINGS CHOSE OPTION TWO, raising prices. Although that has cost the company subscribers, it was ultimately the right thing to do, says Tilson. The dilutive stock and bond offering was also the right thing to do, he contends, as it resolves any concern of a cash crunch.

Of course, whether those moves turn out to have been correct depends entirely on whether customers who've left will come back, and whether the brand is strong enough to continue attracting new converts.

On that score, Tilson thinks that Wall Street is too negative. "There's so much noise and there are so many moving pieces" at this point, Tilson tells me. "Our bet is, even though they'll lose money the next couple of quarters, people will be surprised at how resilient the subscriber base turns out to be," says Tilson.

The Netflix brand is arguably one that is still the most closely associated with indulging in watching movies over the Internet, which is most likely still the wave of the future.

And although the overall subscriber count dropped in the third quarter for the first time in years, the streaming business continues to grow nicely, with gross subscriber additions rising by 30% to 40%, year over year, each quarter. Not only does Tilson believe that the stock could easily double, he thinks downside may be "capped" because Netflix is more than ever an attractive buyout target, given how cheap it's gotten.

"Who's going to be capable of investing the kind of money Netflix has invested to acquire content?" he asks. Not your average venture-backed company, that's for sure.

Netflix's most potent competitor, Amazon.com (AMZN), is basically giving away streaming content with its Amazon Prime membership service.

Although that service is not to be taken lightly, Tilson thinks that it is far more likely that a company with deep pockets, such as Amazon, would buy Netflix's 24-million subscriber operation sooner than trying to match what the company has built.

Still, he says, a Netflix bet is "not for the faint of heart" and involves "a wide range of outcomes."

While Tilson concedes that any hint that the subscriber growth is going south would hurt the stock, "If we're right on the upside, then there's a scenario here where Netflix is the first mover in what turns out to be an enormous and valuable space, worldwide, over time."

And the credibility gap at the top?

"My read on Reed Hastings is that he learns from his mistakes," Tilson tells me.

Netflix shareholders certainly hope so.

Indeed, it helps to do one's homework.