Deadline Reed Hastings

The CEO wasn’t even the company’s highest paid exec last year: That honor went to Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos who made $6.5M, according to the Netflix proxy just filed at the SEC. The big change for Reed Hastings was … Read More »

“There’s still an echo and a bruise” from summer 2011 when Netflix infuriated customers by splitting the streaming and DVD rental operations — dramatically raising the price for those who wanted to continue to receive both services — CEO Reed Hastings told analysts this evening. The strong subscription numbers from the last three months of 2012 show that “we’re out of jail” in consumers’ eyes. He adds, though that “we still have a year and a half of probation.” That may be one reason he didn’t want to touch a question about whether Netflix might raise its price — something that would please investors. “We’re happy at $7.99 [a month] and not speculating about the future,” Hastings says. He’s upbeat about general trends, though. For example consumers’ growing interest in tablets and Internet-connected TVs is “very helpful to us.” Read More »

Shares are up more than 30% in after-market trading following the company’s report of a Q4 profit — in contrast to the Street’s expectation for a loss. Netflix reported net income of $7.9M, down 77.6% vs the period last year, on revenues of $945.2M, +8%. Analysts expected revenues to come in lower at $934.1M. But the profit number was the big surprise: It amounts to 13 cents a share — a contrast to forecasts for a 13 cent loss. Investors also will be surprised by the subscription numbers. Netflix ended 2012 with 27.15M domestic streaming customers, an increase of 2.05M vs the previous quarter. That’s well ahead of company guidance, and analyst predictions for a 1.7M increase. International also was strong with 6.12M subscribers, +1.81M — beating the company’s most optimistic forecast for +1.44M. The good news extended to domestic DVD rentals. Netflix says 8.22M people subscribe, a loss of 380,000; the company had said it might lose at least 458,000. “The fact that our growth remains this strong despite intensifying competition, and our already substantial U.S. market penetration, underlines the large opportunity ahead,” CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells say in their quarterly note to shareholders.

Related: Netflix CEO Says Company Is On “Probation” Despite Subscription Growth Read More »

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings sometimes deals with investors in quirky ways — and one instance involving a Facebook posting may prove to be too quirky for regulators who oversee the securities markets. The streaming company just disclosed that SEC staff sent a “Wells Notice,” a warning that they will recommend to the commission that it institute a cease and desist proceeding or bring a civil action against Hastings for violating fair disclosure rules. Hastings says (yes, in a Facebook post) that the matter involves a message in July that Netflix subscribers streamed 1B hours of content in June. When Hastings made the comment on Facebook, he didn’t also communicate with the Street in a more formal, and conventional, way — with a public filing at the SEC. The filings are supposed to guarantee that companies disclose material information to all investors equally, not selectively to a few. Hastings says he believes that his posting to more than 200,000 Facebook fans “is very public, especially because many of my subscribers are reporters and bloggers.” In addition he says that “we think the fact of 1 billion hours of viewing in June was not ‘material’ to investors, and we had blogged a few weeks before that we were serving nearly 1 billion hours per month.” Although Netflix shares rose the day of his disclosure, Hastings says that the movement began earlier in the day and was “likely driven by the positive Citigroup research report the evening before.” He adds that he’s “optimistic this can be cleared up quickly through the SEC’s review process.” Read More »

Investors see Netflix‘s disappointing subscriber growth as a glass half empty, and today CEO Reed Hastings apparently wants to persuade the public that it’s more than half full. That’s the only reason I can think of for announcing that the company has more than 30M subs globally including more than 25M in the U.S. It’s no surprise. The number is just a tad higher than the figures Netflix reported two days ago for the end of Q3: It said that it had 25.1M domestic streaming subscribers and an additional 4.3M abroad. That irked Wall Street because it meant the company had to cut its forecast for domestic sub growth in 2012 to about 5M from 7M. “We own it in terms of a bad forecast,” Hastings said on Tuesday. “But in terms of actual performance of the business, to grow 5 million net adds domestic is substantial and we feel good about that and about the growth next year.” That’s the theme he’s reinforcing today in a Facebook posting thanking Netflix customers. Read More »

It was the first time the streaming service has pumped out so much content in a month according to a post that CEO Reed Hastings made on his Facebook page. “Congrats to [Chief Content Officer] Ted Sarandos, and his … Read More »