Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, said he’s buying shares of Netflix because the online-streaming service will probably be acquired.
“I’m buying NFLX stock,” Cuban tweeted Friday. “At half of YHOO, 10B<Twitter and small pct of major media companies, someone will try to buy them.”
Cuban, 56, is buying a stock that is trading near its lowest level in five months after slumping more than 20 percent in two days. The shares tumbled Thursday after Netflix reported a slowdown in third-quarter subscriber growth, blaming a recent $1 price increase for new customers. Cuban told CNBC he added 50,000 Netflix shares, although he said he wasn’t sure what his total stake in the company is.
The company, a leader in online streaming with shows such as “Orange Is the New Black,” has a market value of $21 billion, compared with $30.5 billion for micro-blogging site Twitter Inc. and $39 billion for Yahoo.
Netflix fell 1.3 percent to $357.09 at the close in New York after dropping as much as 5.6 percent.
Cuban isn’t the first billionaire to bet on Netflix. Carl Icahn is currently the ninth-largest shareholder, with 2.9 percent of the stock, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
