Netflix Crushes It Again as Shares Near $1,000. Where Rivals At?The smash-hit nail-biting Korean drama Squid Game, French mystery thriller Lupin or VR-infused 3 Body Problem. These are all Netflix Original titles that take us out of the ordinary and into a whirlwind of sensations and visual and emotional excess.
Only that we can have those sensations IRL thanks to the hype train called Netflix stock NFLX — the streaming pioneer schleps us on wild gyrations across the chart — sometimes super scary but sometimes unbelievably good. This time it was the latter.
“I can’t hear you over the sounds of ♫ RING-A-RING-A-RING ♫ blasting out of the speakers of more than 68 million viewers” — Netflix to its competition, probably, as it reported a bombastic quarter with a record number of subscribers.
The very-fabulous, bumper three months to December picked up 19 million paid users (how many of these were day trading while binging?) as Squid Gain Game dialed up more than 68 million views in its first week. The other big hit, Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson boxing live, whipped up 65 million streams.
It was also the perfect quarter to end the practice of reporting subscriber growth. Starting with the current three months to March, the streaming platform won’t be announcing how many new users are onboarded as it shifts the focus to traditional financial metrics like revenue growth and profits.
The shares soared as much as 15% in after-hours activity following the earnings report. They opened for regular trading on Wednesday and hit an all-time session high of $999 a piece. On the way, Netflix crossed a $400 billion valuation.
Here’s a quick rundown of the numbers for the fourth quarter:
Earnings per share: $4.27 vs. $4.20 expected
Revenue: $10.25 billion vs. $10.11 billion expected
Total paid memberships: 301.63 million vs. 290.9 million expected
It was the tech titan’s seventh consecutive quarter of rising profits, up 27% from the year-ago period. Looking ahead, Netflix plans to spend $18 billion on new content in 2025 while revenue is expected to be between $43.5 billion and $44.5 billion, up 14% from last year. Operating margin is projected to hit 29%.
Besides ads, one other thing is supposed to help Netflix get to its lofty guidance — price hikes. The streaming platform will be asking for more cash in the US, Canada, Portugal and Argentina. Here’s what’s changing in the US:
Ad-tier $6.99 > $7.99/mo.
Standard $15.49 > $17.99/mo.
Premium $22.99 > $24.99/mo.
“We’re fortunate that we don’t have distractions like managing declining linear networks and, with our focus and continued investment, we have good and improving product/market fit around the world,” the company said in its earnings report Tuesday.
“We enter 2025 with strong momentum, coming off a year with record net (subscriber) additions and having re-accelerated growth,” it added.
Where’s the competition at? Let’s look at Disney DIS , the closest rival. Disney expects to spend about $24 billion on new content in 2025, up from $23.4 billion. Yet it has about half the subscribers of Netflix — around 154 million.
Other prominent contenders in the streaming war are not even close — Apple AAPL and Amazon AMZN . Apple doesn’t disclose Apple TV+ subscribers and Amazon doesn’t disclose Prime subscribers.
Third-party estimates point to about 50 million to 75 million Apple TV+ users. Amazon Prime, which is tied to the ecommerce platform’s delivery service, has about 200 million customers.
But let’s give it to them — Apple and Amazon have got a bunch of diversified revenue streams, while Netflix has stuck to its OG mission of being a streaming platform.
In any case, this streaming war is not over, so it's worth keeping an eye on company updates and reports in the earnings calendar . (Hint: Disney earnings arrive February 5.)
Where do you think the streaming wars are headed in 2025? Share your thoughts on Netflix, Disney, and the rest in the comments!
