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The streaming giant hosted its record-breaking boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson, and its first ever NFL games, in the quarter.
By Alex Weprin
Media & Business Writer
The NFL and a record-shattering boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul helped Netflix add 19 million subscribers in its fourth quarter — a new record for the company, surpassing even COVID-era highs — as the streaming giant further cemented its place as the leader in the space.
Netflix now has 302 million subscribers, though going forward Wall Street will have to make its own guesses around sub growth, with the company set to stop providing quarterly updates on subscriber numbers in order to put its focus on its revenue and profit growth. It will continue to report subscriber numbers when certain milestones are hit.
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To that end, Netflix reported $10.2 billion in revenue, operating income of $2.3 billion, and a margin of 22.2 percent.
The company says that in Q1 2025 it anticipates revenue of $10.4 billion, and operating income of $2.9 billion. The company also raised its 2025 revenue guidance by $500 million to $43.5 billion-$44.5 billion.
Those numbers are sure to grow, with Netflix also announcing its first price hikes in two years, including a price increase to its advertising-supported tier.
The company is continuing to expand its advertising business, though it is still not quite large enough to be broken out on its own in earnings.
Key to that business is live events, and the past few months have seen a major push in that regard. The Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight shattered streaming records, while Netflix Christmas Day NFL games delivered viewership that rivaled broadcast TV. Earlier this month, Netflix began streaming live episodes of WWE Raw each week.
The company also debuted season two of its smash hit Squid Game in the quarter. The company previously added 5 million subs in Q3.
Those live events likely played a role in driving sub growth as well, if past efforts from other streaming services are any indication.
And they will play a major role going forward.
“Our business remains intensely competitive with many formidable competitors across traditional entertainment and big tech,” the company wrote in its quarterly letter. “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. We have to continue to improve all aspects of Netflix — more series and films our members love, a great product experience, increased sophistication in our plans and pricing strategy (including more advertising capabilities) — and grow into new areas like live programming and games. If we do that well, we believe we’ll have an increasingly valuable company — for consumers, creators and shareholders.”
That said, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters downplayed the role of live events in growing subs, telling analysts “we’ve seen broad strength across content categories across all regions.
“We’ve seen it throughout the entire year, and as we’ve consistently seen across our history, no single title really drives a majority of our acquisition or engagement,” he added.
Netflix also announced that going forward it will release its biannual engagement report in conjunction with its Q2 and Q4 earnings (the report details what programming its users are watching), and that its board had authorized an additional $15 billion in stock buybacks.
And Netflix will also be spending more cash on content, with the company saying that it expects to spend $18 billion on content this year, up from $17 billion in 2024.
In comments on the earnings call, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that the devastating fires that hit Los Angeles will not have an impact to the company’s cash spend, or delay any projects, but that they seriously impacted the larger entertainment community, both above and below the line.
“This industry has been through a really tough couple of years, starting with COVID, going into the strikes, and now this so it’s really important that we try not to delay anything and try to make sure that these jobs stay safe,” Sarandos said.
And he dismissed any claims that Netflix’s planned 2026 release of Greta Gerwig’s Narnia in Imax screens is a sign of a larger strategy shift in movies.
“Our core strategy is to give our members exclusive first round movies on Netflix,” Sarandos said. “The Narnia Imax release is a release tactic. We routinely release movies in theaters a couple of weeks before to qualify for awards for to meet festival requirements and to prime the publicity pump a bit.
“In the case of Narnia, it’s a two-week special event,” he added. “I think it’s very differentiated from other runs, because I doubt anyone has a screen as big as an Imax screen at home, so it is kind of a differentiated consumer experience. But we’ve done variants of these releases many times, and doing it with Imax kind of greatly simplifies our release process as well.”
Peters, meanwhile, said that Netflix’s video game strategy is continuing to evolve.
“We’re going to be focusing on more narrative games based on Netflix IP,” he said. “These are consistent fan favorites, and we’ve got a lot in the library to work with there. We’ll also be introducing party and couch co-op games on the TV delivered from the cloud. We think of this as a successor to family board game night, or an evolution of what the game show on TV used to be.”
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