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LOS ANGELES — Netflix shares popped more than 12% after the closing bell Wednesday as the company reported a boost in subscriber growth driven by a password-sharing crackdown efforts and interest in its new ad-supported tier.

The streaming giant added 8.76 million global subscribers during the quarter, higher than 5.49 million Wall Street had expected, according to estimates from Street Account. It’s the biggest quarterly net add total for the company since second-quarter 2020, when Netflix added 10.1 million.

Here are the results:

  • Earnings: $3.73 vs $3.49 per share expected, according to LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv
  • Revenue: $8.54 billion vs $8.54 billion expected, according to LSEG
  • Total memberships expected: 247.15 million vs. 243.88 million expected, according to Street Account

Netflix said that its ad plan membership grew nearly 70% quarter-over-quarter, although it did not disclose what percentage of its base is subscribed to this tier.

The company is keeping its ad tier pricing at at $6.99 a month in the U.S. while it’s basic and premium services will see a price hike starting today. Netflix’s basic plan will now cost $11.99 (up from $9.99) and premium will be $22.99 a month (up from $19.99). Netflix’s standard plan will remain at $15.49 a month.

The price increases come as the company seeks to improve its profitability and grapple with higher production costs.

As part of its new deal with Hollywood’s writers, Netflix, alongside other members of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, have agreed to higher wages and monetary benefits based on streaming popularity. The AMPTP has yet to finish negotiations with striking actors, but expectations are that costs for creating content will rise when a new contract is finalized.

“The last six months have been challenging for our industry given the combined writers and actors strikes in the U.S.,” Netflix said in its earnings release Wednesday. “While we have reached an agreement with the WGA, negotiations with SAG-AFTRA are ongoing. We’re committed to resolving the remaining issues as quickly as possible so everyone can return to work making movies and TV shows that audiences will love.”

The company forecast that revenue will jump 11% in the fourth quarter, reaching $8.69 billion, below Wall Street expectations of $8.77 billion. Netflix said it expects net subscriber adds will be similar to the third quarter.

It warned that the strength of the U.S. dollar in recent months will result in a roughly $200 million drag on fourth-quarter revenue.

As for Netflix’s profitability, the streamer now expects its full-year 2023 operating margin will be around 20%, the high end of its previous forecast range of 18% to 20%. It also said full-year 2024 should see operating margins of 22% to 23%.

The company also addressed shareholder concern about its executive compensation model, telling investors that it would make “substantial changes” in 2024 to a more conventional model. Compensation will still be based on performance.

Co-CEO Ted Sarandos and former co-CEO Reed Hastings each took home more than $50 million in 2022. Hastings took most of his earnings in stock options, while Sarandos elected to have a $20 million base salary and the rest in stock.

After Greg Peters was named co-CEO and Hastings stepped down, the company set a salary cap of $3 million for executives. However, they are still entitle to an annual target bonus and additional stock rewards.

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Astronomer HR chief Kristin Cabot resigns following Coldplay ‘kiss cam’ incident

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Astronomer HR chief Kristin Cabot resigns following Coldplay 'kiss cam' incident

Chris Martin of Coldplay performs live at San Siro Stadium, Milan, Italy, in July 2017.

Mairo Cinquetti | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Days after Astronomer CEO Andy Byron resigned from the tech startup, the HR exec who was with him at the infamous Coldplay concert has left as well.

“Kristin Cabot is no longer with Astronomer, she has resigned,” a company spokesperson wrote in an email to CNBC Thursday. Cabot was the company’s chief people officer.

Cabot and Byron, who is married with children, were shown in an intimate moment on the ‘kiss cam’ at a recent Coldplay show in Boston, and immediately hid when they saw their faces on the big screen. Lead singer Chris Martin said, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.” An attendee’s video of the incident went viral.

Byron resigned from the company on Saturday. Both Cabot and Byron have been removed the company’s leadership team webpage.

Pete DeJoy, Astronomer’s interim CEO, wrote in a post earlier this week that recent and unexpected national attention has turned the company into “a household name.”

In May, the New York-based company, which commercializes open source software, announced a $93 million investment round led by Bain Ventures and other investors, including Salesforce Ventures.

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Musk’s Starlink hit with outage day after rollout of T-Mobile satellite service

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Musk's Starlink hit with outage day after rollout of T-Mobile satellite service

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Elon Musk‘s satellite internet service Starlink said it had a “network outage” on Thursday. The company said it was working on a solution.

There were more than 60,000 reports of an outage on Downdetector, a site that logs issues.

Starlink is owned and operated by SpaceX, which is also run by Musk.

Musk apologized for the outage on his social media platform X and said, “Service will be restored shortly.”

Musk posted earlier Thursday that the company’s direct-to-cell-phone service was “growing fast” following the announcement that T-Mobile‘s Starlink-powered satellite service was available to the public.

T-Mobile said the T-Satellite service was built to keep phones connected “in places no carrier towers can reach.”

Starlink didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Starlink internet speeds and reliability decrease with popularity, a recent study found.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the T-Satellite service was affected by or involved in the outage.

Read more CNBC tech news

CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this story.

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Intel beats on revenue, slashes foundry investments as CEO says ‘no more blank checks’

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Intel beats on revenue, slashes foundry investments as CEO says 'no more blank checks'

The Intel logo is displayed on a sign in front of Intel headquarters on July 16, 2025 in Santa Clara, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Intel reported second-quarter results on Thursday that beat Wall Street expectations on revenue, as the company’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan announced significant cuts in chip factory construction. The stock ticked higher in extended trading.

Here’s how the chipmaker did versus LSEG consensus estimates:

  • Earnings per share: Loss of 10 cents per share, adjusted.
  • Revenue: $12.86 billion versus $11.92 billion estimated

Intel said it expects revenue for the third-quarter of $13.1 billion at the midpoint of its range, versus the average analyst estimate of $12.65 billion. The chipmaker said that it expects to break even on earnings while analysts were looking for earnings of 4 cents per share.

For the second quarter, Intel reported a net loss of $2.9 billion, or 67 cents per share, compared with a $1.61 billion net loss, or 38 cents per share, in the year-earlier period. Earnings per share were not comparable to analyst estimates due to an $800 million impairment charge, “related to excess tools with no identified re-use,” the company said. That resulted in an EPS adjustment of about 20 cents.

The report was Intel’s second since Lip-Bu Tan took over as CEO in March, promising to make the chipmaker’s products competitive again, and to reduce bureaucracy and layers of management, including slashing staff in Oregon and California.

In a memo to employees published on Thursday, Tan said that the first few months of his tenure had “not been easy.” He said that the company had “completed the majority” of its planned layoffs, amounting to 15% of the workforce, and that it plans to end the year with 75,000 employees. Intel previously said it was trying to reduce operating expenses by $17 billion in 2025.

Intel shares are up about 13% this year as of Thursday’s close after plummeting 60% in 2024, their worst year on record.

Tan also announced several other spending cuts in the memo, particularly in the company’s costly foundry division, which makes chips for other companies and is still looking for a big customer to anchor the business.

Intel said its foundry business had an operating loss of $3.17 billion on $4.4 billion in revenue.

Tan said that Intel had cancelled planned fab projects in Germany and Poland, and will consolidate its testing and assembly operations in Vietnam and Malaysia. He added that the company would slow down the pace of its construction of a cutting-edge chip factory in Ohio, depending on market demand and if it can secure big customers for the facility.

“Over the past several years, the company invested too much, too soon – without adequate demand,” Tan wrote. “In the process, our factory footprint became needlessly fragmented and underutilized.”

Tan wrote that the company’s forthcoming chip manufacturing process, called 14A, will be built out based on confirmed customer commitments.

“There are no more blank checks. Every investment must make economic sense,” Tan wrote.

The company’s client computing group, which is primarily comprised of sales of central processors for PCs, had $7.9 billion in sales, down 3% on an annual basis.

Revenue in the data center group, which includes some AI chips but is mostly central processors for servers, rose 4% to $3.9 billion. Tan wrote in his memo that Intel wants to regain market share in data center chips, and is looking for a permanent leader for the business. Longtime rival Advanced Micro Devices has increasingly been winning server business from cloud customers.

Tan added he would personally review and approve all chip designs before they are taped out, which is the final step of the design process before a new chip is manufactured.

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