Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Netflix, a US video streaming service provider, reported today that its revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 was $7.852 billion, up 3.9% from a year earlier, and its net profit was $55 million, down 91% from $607 million a year earlier. Netflix's fourth-quarter revenue was basically in line with Wall Street analysts' expectations, while earnings per share fell short of expectations. In terms of performance outlook, Netflix's outlook for revenue in the first quarter of fiscal 2023 was slightly higher than expected, but its outlook for earnings per share was lower than expected. At the same time, Netflix's growth in the number of paid users of its new streaming service slowed in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, but still far exceeded analysts' expectations. Affected by this, after the release of the results, Nai Frisbee shares rose nearly 7%.

After the announcement, Netflix executive chairman Reed Hastings (Read Hastings), co-CEO Ted Sarandos (Ted Sarandos), co-CEO Greg Peters (Greg Peters), CFO Spencer Newman (Spencer Neumann) and vice president of investor relations Spencer Wang and other executives attended the subsequent earnings call to interpret the main points and answer questions from BofA analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich: the company announced a major personnel change today. Could you ask the management to talk about the decision-making process?

Reed Hastings: speaking of which, it seems that the company went public yesterday. Our offering price is only about $1. I hope some listeners still own the shares we issued at that time. Reviewing the development of the company, three members of the management and many outstanding employees of the company have witnessed our progress from the initial DVD rental service to the leader in the streaming media industry, as well as into the homemade film and series industry and becoming a new player in games.

We now have more than 230 million members, and writer Jim Collins might not call it the best-case scenario, he might say it's a good start, of course it's a very good start. Our dream is to enable all the people in the world to find their favorite entertainment content on the Netflix platform, in short, to entertain the world. Our three members have been working together for 15 years to solve all kinds of problems and how to promote the growth of the company, so I am very happy to be able to achieve this succession. Of course, the whole process was promoted by the board of directors ten years ago, taking into account their talents in all aspects to find the most suitable platform for them to contribute their talents. About two and a half years ago, we took the first step of promoting Ted to co-CEO and Greg to chief operating officer, who also led the company to make great progress. This personnel change is also a recognition of their performance in the past few quarters of the company, and I also feel very good about this change.

The company's stock price has achieved record growth in the past decade. I also know that management wants to promote the growth of the company and break the previous record of share price growth. I very much support their idea. As executive chairman of the company, I will also try my best to help them, but they still have the initiative to lead the company through the wind and waves. I know that they have rubbed their hands and are eager to try. So it is appropriate to make this decision at the present point in time.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich: I think this is also the smoothest transition reported in the media for a long time. I would also like to ask Ted and Greg what this handover means for Netflix, and whether there will be a strategic change?

Ted Sarandos: first of all, I want to thank Reid, both personally and professionally, who we can trust, role model, mentor and friend. Reid has changed every aspect of my life over the past 20 years, and it's hard for Greg and me to do so. fortunately, the joint system allows us to form more synergies. Reid was far-sighted, so he mentioned that he had been thinking about handover since about a decade ago, and was very generous in creating a joint CEO system, and officially announced the decision two and a half years ago, and in the time since, Reid left a lot of daily work to Greg and me. I have been working with Greg for 15 years, but especially in the last two and a half years, we have formed a relationship of mutual trust, respect and complementarity, and many aspects of the cooperative relationship are the same as those between Reid and me. I believe that this joint CEO system can promote the faster development of the company, solve the problems that may arise in the company through mutual supervision and discussion, and achieve a higher degree of development, so this is a very good progress. Also respond to your comments, yes, our management is very stable, so the transition will be relatively smooth, but also because we have laid a very good foundation and corporate culture to cope with all kinds of complex changes together. as you have seen in the past quarter, we have successfully dealt with all kinds of situations. To Greg, I want to say that I am very happy to work with you, and to Reid, I want to say thank you very much.

Greg Peters: thank you, Ted. It's a great pleasure to take over as co-CEO of the company, and it's a great honor to work with such a group of excellent people to manage Netflix. I very much agree with Ted's view that in the past year or two, our cooperation has been very pleasant and fruitful, and I am very proud to be able to cooperate with Ted. We have formed complementary skills, viewpoints, perspectives and other aspects. the endogenous driving force for our successful cooperation to deal with different situations is to promote business growth and serve our members.

We are very proud of the growth of the company in the past year and in the new year, and we will follow the spirit of excellence put forward by Reid. In response to your question, we will not change much in terms of strategy and culture. Ted and I will work together to continue the company's continuous strategy and make timely changes in response to all kinds of situations in the market. but we are not brewing the kind of change you mentioned.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich: one question for the three of you. I think a recent hot comment is that John John Malone mentioned that "shareholders should build a big monument to Reed Hastings." John Malone and Rupert Murdoch (Rupert Murdoch) have built the world's largest media group in the past few decades, are also one of the few CEO with extraordinary vision in the world, and hold a lot of assets in their respective companies. Netflix can also be called one of the most influential media companies in the world. What are the company's goals for the next five years? Do you want to get bigger, or stick to the existing line?

Ted Sarandos: what is going to happen now and in the future is the shift of consumers to streaming media, the way they watch content at home, provide them with on-demand services through the Internet, and get rid of the shackles of the linear TV system. This is a fundamental change in the form of business, an inevitable move to adapt to changes in consumer habits, and a law that we have been following since we started doing original content a decade ago. Netflix has benefited a lot from the user-first principle, and allowing users to view content in the most convenient way is at the core of this principle. Of course, our previous business development is also a strong foundation for the development of the company today. We are still concerned about consumer trends, and this principle will not change. We have mentioned these things repeatedly, but we need to note that the shift to streaming media has only just begun. In the US market, we only account for 8% of the total TV viewing time. Even in a market where our business has developed very mature like the United States, there is still great potential for future growth. User first is not only the ultimate guide for us to move forward, but also our biggest beneficiary factor, which contributed to the development of the company today.

Greg Peters: the principles we adhere to have driven the company's growth, serving more users and creating more unimaginable, high-quality entertainment content, and we think we can do more in terms of viewing time and cultural influence, including "Wednesday" and the pop culture impact of "Stranger Things". It will also generate more revenue and profits for the company. We are very much looking forward to this.

Related readings:

"Netflix's fourth-quarter revenue was $7.852 billion, and its net profit fell 91% year-on-year."

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.