Netflix reported the first-quarter earnings that surpassed analysts’ expectations, with shares rising 2.5% within the prolonged buying and selling hours. The video streaming big attributed the success to “membership progress and better pricing.” Moreover, “the timing of bills” additionally helped increase its profitability.
The corporate raised costs throughout most of its plans this yr within the US, Canada, Portugal, and Argentina. This included its customary plan with out commercials, its cheaper ad-supported tier, and its premium plan. These will increase contributed to larger profitability in the course of the first quarter, with the working margin climbing to 31.7%—almost 4 proportion factors larger than in the identical quarter final yr. Netflix additionally famous that income from promoting stays comparatively small in comparison with its core subscription revenue.
Netflix’s inventory has proven notable resilience amid the tariff-induced market turmoil of 2025, rising 9% year-to-date—a pointy distinction to double-digit proportion declines seen throughout different main tech shares. “Primarily based on what we’re seeing by truly working the enterprise proper now, there’s nothing actually important to notice,” commented co-CEO Greg Peters. “We additionally take some consolation that leisure traditionally has been fairly resilient in harder financial instances. Netflix, particularly, additionally, has been typically fairly resilient. We haven’t seen any main impacts throughout these harder instances, albeit over a a lot shorter historical past.”
Strategic shift in reporting metrics
This quarter additionally marks a shift in Netflix’s reporting strategy, as the corporate has stopped disclosing subscriber numbers. As an alternative, it is going to concentrate on extra conventional enterprise metrics, comparable to income progress and revenue margins. Whereas Netflix added 18.9 million subscribers within the fourth quarter of 2024, analysts count on person progress to sluggish in 2025.
Netflix’s earnings hit a trough in 2022 as subscriber progress stalled, prompting the corporate to overtake its progress technique. It launched a less expensive ad-supported plan on the finish of 2022 and started cracking down on password sharing. The corporate has since expanded into reside sports activities and occasions programming, together with the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson struggle, NFL video games, the Beyoncé Bowl, and different live-streamed leisure.
The corporate indicated that its new content material helped drive income and revenue progress within the first quarter. Well-liked titles included the collection Adolescence, and movies comparable to Again in Motion, Advert Vitam, Counterattack, in addition to the reside programme WWE RAW. Netflix additionally highlighted that Adolescence grew to become the primary streaming present to high the UK’s weekly TV rankings.
Robust monetary efficiency
For the primary quarter, Netflix reported earnings per share of $6.61 (€5.81) on income of $10.54 (€9.27) billion—up 25% and 12.5% year-on-year, respectively. Each figures beat Wall Road estimates. Working revenue rose 27% to $3.35 billion (€2.95), leading to an working margin of 31.7%—the very best in recent times.
The corporate maintained its steering for 2025, forecasting income of between $43.5 billion (€38.3 billion) and $44.5 billion (€39.1 billion), with a focused working margin of 29%. “There’s been no materials change to our general enterprise outlook since our final earnings report,” the corporate said. “We’re presently monitoring above the mid-point of our 2025 income steering vary.”