Netflix, once a scrappy disruptor, is now firmly established as the king of streaming. And its rivals aren't even close.
The company's stock is up 36% from a year ago, while Disney shares have slipped 10%, and Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN's parent company) is down 22% over the same period.
"It has become increasingly clear that Netflix has won the 'streaming wars,'" wrote Bank of America media analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich.
After the market close Tuesday, Netflix gave investors another reason to cheer, announcing in its fourth quarter earnings that it added more than 13 million subscribers. Wall Street was expecting less than 9 million.
Netflix shares jumped more than 7% in late trading.
Of course, being No. 1 also tends to put a target on your back, and Netflix can no longer count on subscriber growth to dazzle investors every quarter.
So what tricks does Netflix have up its sleeve for the year ahead? In short: more live stuff, more sports.
We'll do it live!
The watchword of media earnings calls this year, I suspect, will be "live." As in live sports, live reality-TV reunions, live awards shows — those events that audiences actually care about viewing in real time that are still mostly found on traditional TV.
On Tuesday, Netflix announced its biggest investment in live programming yet, acquiring the exclusive rights to "WWE Raw."
"This deal is transformative," said Mark Shapiro, president of WWE's parent company TKO, in a statement. "It marries the can't-miss WWE product with Netflix's extraordinary global reach and locks in significant and predictable economics for many years."
The deal is a notable pivot for Netflix, which for years was reluctant to consider sports programming. Of course, it also vowed to never run ads, too... Clearly, it's evolving.
In the past year, Netflix introduced a much cheaper advertising-supported subscription tier in a bid to boost subscriber numbers. And it seems to have worked. Earlier this month, Netflix's president of advertising said the ad tier hit more than 23 million monthly memberships.
Having the cheaper tier has almost certainly helped soften the blow to customers who can no longer log in with their sister's ex-roommate's dad's account info. In its growth era, Netflix turned a blind eye to mooching, betting that audiences would be easier to convert down the road, after Netflix became a daily habit.
But last year, the company began pushing "borrowers" to create their own subscriptions. On Tuesday, Netflix declared the password-sharing crackdown a success.
Netflix finished 2023 with 12% revenue growth, up from 6% in 2022. My colleague Samantha Delouya has the story.
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