The streaming wars may have claimed a new victim.
Roku shares plummeted nearly 30% last week, its worst weekly performance stretching to its 2017 IPO.
The streaming platform stock was pummeled Friday after Pivotal Research slapped a sell rating and $60 price target on it, fearing a rush of competition in the space. It was crushed days earlier after CNBC owner Comcast announced it would offer a free streaming box to its internet customers.
It could get even worse, according to Craig Johnson, chief market technician at Piper Jaffray.
Roku has “violated the uptrend support line off those April lows of this year. You’ve got some support that comes in at $113. But purely based upon the charts, your best support comes in all the way back down at the 200-day moving average. So you can see the stock trade back down to $81, maybe even $75,” Johnson said Friday on CNBC’s “Trading Nation.”
A move down to $75 marks 30% downside from current levels. It has not traded at that price since May.
“The risk/reward isn’t favorable. Even though the stock is up, it has sold off quite a bit in here recently. I still think you got about 30% downside and maybe a relief rally of 7% upside, so I’d be selling into this move,” said Johnson.
Quint Tatro, founder of Joule Financial, does not see Pivotal’s note on Roku as the stock’s death knell.
“Obviously, the stock got way overheated, trading 25 times sales, but [Pivotal’s] rationale regarding losing market share I don’t agree with. You have to understand, this is a cord-cutting product so their whole rationale is that the cable companies are going to offer their own device for free in order to compete. I’m a Roku user. I own six of them in our home and office. I have not had cable for years so I would not switch to a cable device,” Tatro said on the show.
Tatro says a pullback in Roku’s share price to 14 to 15 times sales, around $100, would make him a buyer. Roku would need to fall 7% from Friday’s close to get to that level.
Disclosure: Comcast is the owner of NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC and CNBC.com.
