Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson: Cover Your NFLX Short. Now.

An unusual and rather classy response from a company executive to a shortseller of his stock. Interesting that Hastings chose Seeking Alpha to publish his response – it’s a nice exclusive for my former employer. The money quote from Hastings:

I have to agree with my friend Whitney that there are many risks ahead for Netflix, that our valuation is substantial, and that it is possible that one could make money shorting Netflix today. But shorting a market leading firm as it is driving a huge new market is a very gutsy call. On balance, I would rather have my co-philanthropists on the long side of this particular bet.

Here’s the pain Tilson has endured over the past year (assuming he’s been short the whole time):

And here’s Tilson’s short thesis that Hastings responded to. Tadas Viskanta from Abnormal Returns put up a screencast of this issue and the response to it from around the web today – he could add this TechCrunch writeup.