Illustration of stock trading graph of Netflix seen on a smartphone screen.
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Netflix added millions more subscribers in the fourth quarter than Wall Street expected, helping to send shares of the streamer up after the bell despite a big earnings miss.
The company also disclosed that co-CEO Reed Hastings would be stepping down from his position and transitioning to the post of executive chairman. Greg Peters, the company’s chief operating officer has been promoted to co-CEO alongside the already established Ted Sarandos.
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Here are the results:
EPS: 12 cents vs 45 cents per share, according to Refinitiv.
Revenue: $7.85 billion $7.85 billion, according to Refinitiv survey.
Global paid net subscribers: 7.66 million adds, compared to 4.57 million subscribers expected, according to StreetAccount estimates.
Netflix’s EPS missed largely due to a loss related to euro-denominated debt, but its margins of 7% still topped Wall Street’s expectations. The depreciation of the U.S. dollar compared to the euro during the fourth quarter isn’t an operational loss.
This is the first quarter that Netflix’s new ad-supported service is included in its earnings results. The company launched this cheaper tier in November, but has not disclosed what portion of the new subscriptions are from users who have opted for this service.
During the company’s prerecorded earnings call, Netflix said that it has seen comparable engagement from its new ad tier members as it has seen with its regular consumers. Additionally, it noted that it has not seen a significant number of people switching plans. So, those who subscribe to its premium and more expensive offerings are rarely bumping down to the cheaper ad-supported model.
“We wouldn’t be getting into this business if it couldn’t be a meaningful portion of our business,” said Spencer Neumann, the company’s chief financial officer, during the call. “We’re over $30 billion in revenue, almost $32 billion in revenue, in 2022 and we wouldn’t get into a business like this if we didn’t believe it could be bigger than at least 10% of our revenue.”
Last quarter, the streamer said it was “very optimistic” about its new advertising business. Going forward, Netflix will no longer give subscriber guidance, although it will still report those numbers in future earnings reports. The rationale is that the company is growing its focus on revenue as its primary top line metric instead of membership growth.
“2022 was a tough year, with a bumpy start but a brighter finish,” the company said in a statement. “We believe we have a clear path to reaccelerate our revenue growth: continuing to improve all aspects of Netflix, launching paid sharing and building our ads offering. As always, our north stars remain pleasing our members and building even greater profitability over time.”
Netflix touted new releases like the television series “Wednesday,” the docuseries “Harry and Meghan” as well as Rian Johnson’s film “Glass Onion” as popular content during the quarter.
The company predicts that revenue growth in the first quarter 2023 will rise 4%, higher than the 3.7% Wall Street is currently projecting. Netflix says this growth will be driven by more paid memberships and more money per paid membership.
Additionally, the first quarter will mark Netflix’s preliminary roll out of its paid sharing program, which aims to make money from users who previously shared passwords with people outside their own homes.
The company said it expects some users who were borrowing accounts to stop watching programming on the platform, because they are not added as extra members to existing accounts or do not convert to paid members.
“However, we believe the pattern will be similar to what we’ve seen in Latin America, with engagement growing over time as we continue to deliver a great slate of programming and borrowers sign-up for their own accounts,” the company said.
The logo of Japanese company SoftBank Group is seen outside the company’s headquarters in Tokyo on January 22, 2025.
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Shares of SoftBank Group plunged as much as 9.17% Wednesday, as technology stocks in Asia declined, tracking losses in U.S. peers overnight.
The Japanese tech-focused investment firm saw shares drop for a second consecutive session, following its announcement of a $2 billion investment in Intel. Intel shares rose 6.97% to close at $25.31 Tuesday stateside.
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Other Japanese tech stocks also declined, with semiconductor giant Advantest falling as much as 6.27%. Meanwhile, shares in Renesas Electronics and Tokyo Electron were last seen trading 2.46% and 0.75% lower, respectively.
Technology companies in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, also fell after U.S. tech stocks dropped overnight spurred by declines in artificial intelligence darling Nvidia‘s shares.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is considering the federal government taking equity stakes in semiconductor companies that get funding under the CHIPS Act for building plants in the U.S, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The U.S. CHIPS and Science Act seeks to boost the country’s semiconductor industry, scientific research and innovation.
Shares of Taiwanese chip company TSMC and manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry — known globally as Foxconn — declined 1.69% and 2.16%, respectively. TSMC manufactures Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units that help power large language models, while Foxconn has a strategic partnership with Nvidia to build “AI factories.”
Meanwhile, South Korean tech stocks mostly fell with shares of chipmaker SK Hynix down 3.33%. Samsung Electronics, however, rose 0.75%.
TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix are among companies that have received funding under the CHIPS Act.
Over in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Tech index lost 0.87% in early trade.
CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 15, 2025.
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Palantir‘s stock slumped more than 9% on Tuesday, falling for a fifth straight day to continue its pullback from all-time highs.
The artificial intelligence software provider’s stock has slid more than 15% over the last five trading sessions, after a stellar earnings report earlier this month propelled shares to all-time highs. The report was Palantir’s first-ever $1 billion revenue quarter.
Tuesday’s dip coincided with a broader market pullback.
Palantir is the most significant gainer to date in the S&P 500 in 2025, up more than 100%.
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Shares have more than doubled as the company benefits from ongoing AI enthusiasm, scooping up government contracts with President Donald Trump pushing to overhaul agencies.
Palantir’s ascent has pushed the company into a list of top 10 U.S. tech firms and 20 most valuable U.S. companies, while also making shares incredibly expensive to own. Its forward price-to-earnings ratio, which tracks future earnings relative to share price, has soared past 245 times.
By comparison, technology giants such as Microsoft and Apple carry a P/E of nearly 30 times and rake in significantly greater quarterly revenues. Meta‘s and Alphabet‘s P/E ratios hover in the 20s.
The data analytics software vendor said Tuesday that it’s raising a funding round that values the company at over $100 billion. That would make Databricks just the fourth private company to eclipse the $100 billion mark, following SpaceX, ByteDance and OpenAI, according to data from CB Insights.
Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan that the total round will exceed $1 billion. The company was last valued by private investors at $62 billion in a $10 billion financing round late last year.
In June, Databricks executives told investors the company was forecasting $3.7 billion in annualized revenue by July, with 50% year-over-year growth.
Snowflake, one of Databricks’ top rivals, is expected to generate $4.5 billion in revenue for the fiscal year that ends in January, representing annual growth of 25%, according to LSEG. Snowflake currently has a market cap of about $65 billion. Other competitors include cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft, which are also Databricks partners.
Ghodsi said he heard from a lot of interested investors following Figma’s IPO late last month. Shares of the design software company more than tripled in their New York Stock Exchange debut, a sign that public investors are seeking out tech offerings after in extended lull in the IPO market.
“My phone was blowing up,” Ghodsi said on Tuesday. “So yes, there’s definitely been a big push from outside.”
Figma shares have since retreated from their initial $115.50 closing price. The stock is trading at about $70, still more than double the $33 IPO price.
Ghodsi said the round will help Databricks invest in products that clients can tap when using artificial intelligence models.
Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, Databricks ranked third on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list. As of June, the company employed 8,000 people. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners Thrive Capital and WCM Investment Management are buying shares, a spokesperson said.