The Numbers That Have Netflix Investors Spooked

This episode is presented by AMC Network, a new chapter in Anne Rice's Immortal Universe begins with AMC's The Vampire Listot. Get a backstage pass to the iconic frontman who pace magazine calls a Bowie-inspired rocker that will have fans screaming. Don't miss the legendary Vampire Listot De Leon Corps in his own electrifying rock saga. Catch the Vampire Listot Sunday's only on AMC and AMC Plus. Learn more at AMCPlus.com. It is Friday, July 17th. It's pretty crazy how much the narrative on Netflix has changed over the past few months. The dominant subscription streaming service is still dominant, don't get me wrong, but the stock price has dropped by half since October, when it began its failed quest to buy Warner Brothers, down another 5% today. The lingering over the company has been this nagging question of engagement, or the perception that viewership on the platform isn't growing as fast as it once did. Their fewer hits, the second seasons of shows aren't performing as planned, and the whole push into video podcasts and YouTubers isn't doing much. The company released its second quarter earnings yesterday, and turns out some of those fears were justified and some kind of weren't. Netflix hit its earnings estimates, it's now delivering $12 billion in revenue per quarter. That's more than Disney, and without a single major theme park. And profit is up too, but the engagement number increased only 2%. An hour's watch per member was down almost 8%, with the second half of 2025, according to Guggenheim. More important for Wall Street, the projections into next quarter were soft, and in a bit of a take our ball and go home move, Netflix's CEOs Ted Serandos and Greg Peter said they will no longer release ratings reports twice a year. It'll be just once a year now, kind of a worst move there, and investors didn't like it. So what's the solution here? Netflix has faltered before the 2022 correction comes to mind, but it has always recovered. And yet now the dominant streaming platform is being treated like just another challenge media company. How can Netflix recharge its growth and doesn't need to buy another studio? Today, we've got Michael Morris on to discuss. He's an analyst at Guggenheim, like I mentioned, and he's put out his assessment of the quarter. We're going to get into Netflix's Wall Street conundrum, where the market has turned, and more importantly, what they can do about it. From the ringer and puck. I'm Matt Bellany, and this is the town. Okay, we are here with Michael Morris, who is Senior Managing Director of Guggenheim, a prominent analyst firm, and a close watcher of Netflix. Welcome, Michael. Thank you for having me. Great to be here. First time. I know. How have you not been on the show before? I've known you a while now. I know. We've collaborated. We've collaborated, but now it's going to be here. Thanks for having me. Well, I want you to come on. Obviously, the big Netflix earnings reveal was yesterday. The reveal has been described as ho-hum, or not enough, or strong yet dot dot dot. And I want to start here by explaining this to people in Hollywood and elsewhere. What is actually going on here? Because if you look at the fundamentals of Netflix, this is a company that is generating $12 billion in revenue per quarter, more than the Walt Disney company. It is clearly the leader in streaming. It is clearly still growing, and yet you guys now have a price target on this stock. It's currently at $68, which is incredible, down almost half from last October. You guys are trying to get this stock to $75, and that is down more than 30% from what you guys said this stock should be previously. So what is going on here? Yeah, it's a great question. There's two things. I'd say, one is, how's the company performing? And I'm sure that this is a source of frustration for the management team, because they're heading their metrics. They're growing their revenue, double digits. They're expanding the profit margins. What do you want from us, right? But the industry, the investors, it's about the future, it's about the gross potential, it's about what is the upside for this business, and Netflix, which was once the quote unquote winner of the streaming wars, and I always hated that, because I didn't think there was an end to this process, but sure, it was unbridled upside, a billion global households in pricing power and beating the competition, and now it's like, hey, maybe you're getting closer to the ceiling of that gross, and you're looking for smaller ways to supplement and those kinds of things. So, I think this is about the future, the street has looked at engagement, the engagement report, which I'm sure we'll talk about, and having that growth slow, it's not robust. If it's not robust at the unit level, what are your limitations at the pricing level, what are your limitations at the profit level, and investors look to other high growth ideas to move their money to, and that's where we are right now. You're basically saying that Netflix is just a media company now, that this rocket ship, tech company, a billion total addressable market, that is not the promise land that people had hoped. Sort of. So, first of all, I will say, yes, I talked a lot of investors, and they get angry, or they have opinions, and it has been pitched to me more than once in the last 12 hours that Netflix is now just a media company, so to speak, but I think really, it's about the gross, right? It's like, yes, they would say, and I don't disagree with this, they're in less than half of the potential homes they could be in, right? They're in, they say, 45% of homes, no, 55%, so still grow into is a great place to be. But what is the pricing power on those 55%, right? How much more price can you take in the US if people aren't using your product more? Do you have to spend more on your content? These are all the things, and yeah, that's a bit more media like as opposed to the big swing high growth tech business that used to be. Yeah, you wrote in your report, this outlook likely reinforces investor concerns with the 2030 financial framework of $78 billion in revenue, $9 billion in advertising, and 410 million members unlikely to be achieved. That's it right there. Just catching, right? Yes, very, very catching, congratulations. The growth trajectory they have projected is not going to get there based on these metrics. So let's talk about these metrics because we got to first just do a big FU for the decision not to release the engagement report more than once a year. Ted Cerandos, the co-CEO, has come on the show, Bella Bajaria has also come on the show talking about Netflix being the most transparent of all the streaming companies. They release their weekly top 10s, and then they do these biannual dumps of all their shows, and you and I, and everyone else can see what we're all watching. Now they're going to do that once a year, basically because they don't like the results, and they don't like that we all obsess over the show rankings. Yeah? Yeah. You're not going to say that. I can say that. I'm not going to say that exactly, but this is what I'll say with respect to the topic. Number one, when you take stuff away, people don't like it. It's that simple, right? Investors do not like it. What do you, you stop telling us your member numbers, which arguably they should have stuck with because I think that those trends probably look better than the engagement report at this point. And then I do think that Netflix has a valid point that a raw viewership number is not necessarily indicative of the sort of economic power. So let you say three hours of NFL football for a certain number of people probably drives more subscription behavior than 50 hours of maybe children's programming, right? Which is a point they made last night. And I think it's totally a fair point, maybe in hindsight, something that could have been relevant when they moved to this report. But I've said that for a while now. Yeah, you don't want to encourage behavior that's not aligned. Yeah, they should be talking about how much better and curated and premium their content is because this race to become YouTube and all of the low value content and the obsession that we all have with engagement time, it's not going to end well for Netflix because they're never going to match YouTube. And all of a sudden, they've got all these garbage shows on their platform and they decrease the value of the platform to the people who do pay for the platform in my opinion. I couldn't agree with you more on the core point, which is, I feel like this company and this service at its peak was an incredible value proposition. Not just that the cost was a great cost when you compared it to the bundle, but man, having these shows that were really good without commercials watching them was terrific. I understand there's a ceiling to that and they want to be more, but I don't know. They were really good at that. I think trying to compete with YouTube's little bit of a tough mission and arguably not one that they want to be on. Yeah. And they're getting hammered by the free competitors that are taking time away from them to be YouTube, the free tears of other things like Pluto. Do you think I think they'll have a free tear within a year? Greg Peters basically said they're open to it, but he said there are no immediate plans for a free tear. But do you think that's a smart thing to do to have a top of funnel where people come in for free library content or the first episode of shows and then you either upsell them or monetize their time via ads in the US? I hate the idea. I'm just straight up saying it. why? For the reason we just said, it was like this company was this premium business with pricing power that had enough breaths to be penetrated. You want to, you know, the shows, we talk a little bit about the shows and the engagement report, but the shows that matter, the hits, you're a tech company, you're a media company, right? Like, be awesome. Like, who do you know that talks about? And I love to be for Fox, but who talks about to be? Like, who talks about Pluto? Whatever. I mean, free. Sure. Okay. So it's free. Well, they're growing. It's just a different, it's a different kind of viewing. You asked me at first about the numbers, Ruby, which I would argue is the best of these free streaming services. Okay. Does about a billion dollars a year in revenue. Roku, which is great. Roku channel sells less than half of their volume, their ad volume available. Netflix is doing 40 plus billion of revenue and we're saying, hey, the solution is we're going to go into this free business. And by the way, Spotify has a free business that they talked about, right? The premium that moves into their subscription. The conversion continues to go down. I would argue, right? And it's because they have more of these users, but that the promise of that conversion doesn't necessarily show up in the numbers. Now, I want to be clear, I'm talking about in the US. And I think that they hedge a little bit about the difference between in the US and out of the US. I think they definitely did. They said it would make sense in certain markets. Correct. Correct. And so I like that. I don't, you know, I see some analyst reports, repressed reports, like, oh, they should have a fast. I'm, I just don't know if you're making high-end cars. I don't know why you need to get into the low end, right? However, I think that the international markets are a different situation because we have awareness here. There's just not awareness necessarily even still in some markets. Like, they're in a lot of markets, right? But one of the reasons that they want to do more of these local partnerships is because people love their local stuff, right? So to think that people in another country behave the way we do, I think that free could be an on ramp to your point. Yeah. I'm torn on it. I actually think it might make sense for certain things. They could make a clear distinction between the free and the subscription and put some of the lower value content there or the old library stuff that they haven't been licensing out. And essentially use it as a front front door tease, a, you know, window dressing for the larger service, but there's obviously a risk both to brand and the business. I'm so skeptical that it works. Who in the US is like, well, if you just give me oranges and new black for free, maybe I'll sign up for, you know, whatever the next show is. Well, but I do know a lot of people who use to subscribe and don't because they're not a fan of they don't think that the content is good anymore. So there are those people out there. Maybe you win them back with free. I don't know. I don't know. Let's move on to the engagement report because your analysis, I always enjoy your analysis of the engagement report. And you noted that the television viewing is up 4.5% over the first half of the year. Film viewership, the movies that are on Netflix, down 3.1%. Why is that? Does Netflix have a film problem? Because this is not a new thing. They've been dropping for a few quarters now. Yeah. I think I'm so, so I'll say a couple things because I saying whether or not they have a problem or like an incremental problem is tough to sort of separate that maybe they just had a lot more films before and even if they weren't that good, they got views, but that doesn't necessarily translate, right? So that's what they would say. Their whole line, we're only doing the good stuff now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, which I don't believe, but whatever. We all only do the good stuff. We've learned so much. I think so. All right. So here's what I have. Here's what I have. I looked into a little war beyond. So like we said, if you look at the TV and film kind of dynamic, you just mentioned this quarter, since they started giving us this report, I'm just looking TVs up 13% in terms of hours, film down 7. Okay. So that's that's a little bit of the paradigm since 2023, since yet the first quarter or first half of 23. Okay. And total hours up 8%. All right. So they give you I give you the data offline. That suggests the problem with film, right? So if you look at film, we kind of broke it down by the amount of viewing. If you look at those those titles, they get over a hundred million views. They're actually up. They had two that started 23 two titles. They hit that threshold. They had six in the first or in the first and the second half of 23 that's six. Okay. Just for a frame of reference here, I want to go through the top 10. It's war machine. The rip swapped. That's the animated film in Michael B. Jordan K. Pop demon hunters, a holdover Apex, Charlie Starran, thrash. People we meet on vacation. The crash. The Peaky Blinders movie and office romance with J. Lo not an Oscar winner there, except for K. Pop demon hunters, but maybe the rip. I don't know. I like that one, but you can see what people are watching on Netflix. I think there's a couple different issues here, right? They're running a certain business. They I think that they would love to have an entire slate of Oscar contenders. It's just not the reality of it. They're running a business for streaming and maybe some of the the awareness is, but oh, I get it. I'm just making fun. I'm just making fun of them. Look, if we want to take the conversation more broadly, which is like, what can they do from here? I think at the core, they want they they need to like get cooler again, right? You get sort of like, like, reignite that. I'll tell you something else. I you know, because I really wanted to dig in the engagement and think about it. They talked about this show. They're they're top sort of like new new release of the year. I will find you, right? And if you look at the numbers from the engagement report, they're pretty good numbers. Like 87 million views in the first month is puts it in. Yeah. That's the number three show. And then just to say the top 10 shows from this half, his and hers, Bridgerton season four. I will find you, which you just mentioned, see Stranger Things season five, a show called Run Away that I'm not familiar with, teach you a lesson, one piece that's the anime show, Man on Fire season one, Miss Rachel, which they got from YouTube, and the night agent season one. Okay, sure, right? What is the path to growth? Like, what can they do to accelerate growth other than like, make better shows, I guess, make more appealing shows. There's got to be other levers here because I think that's what people are focusing on is Netflix may have run out of levers. They did the password sharing to boost subscribers. They added the ad business to boost revenue. Where are the levers here for growth? If I knew they could they could they could bring me on, right? And and and actually for but but I I mean, I don't think it's some of these marginal things like a free tier in the U.S. You know, I mean, I don't know, it feels like a stocking. I think that I would like to see them put films in the theaters. Okay. I would like to see them make films that are of a quality that can succeed in the theaters. I think it's I think it's money left on the table if you put financial resources and talent into making a great film. Why would you not put it in the theater? Now, I know the messages. It's for our members, etc. But and that's not going to move the needle. That's not going to get you billions and billions in profits. Like they need a better plan than that. It is it is money that their competitors are going to be taking when they make a film that they are not. It's also marketing for your product that puts you in the zeitgeist. Like I go by this data point. Just looking at I will find you and be I'm kind of like man, I mean, I'm not totally plugged in, but I'm a little bit like I'm not really that familiar with that. And I looked at the the Google Trends data, the search data, and it's the searches for the title or a fraction of many other titles, including now you look, you look at the hits like you know, stranger things or bridge or ten or Wednesday, you get these same numbers, but you look at look at the title, look at the pit, look at the white lotus right on HBO. They have multiples of the search, you know, trend data that that I will find you has. Yeah, I mean, it also that shows you a little older. It's Harlan Cobin and the star Sam Worthington like that. It's not not exactly a cool young show, but I hear what you're saying, right? Is that they don't they need to market more, but what you guys do in your report, you do talk about some of the ways they can accelerate growth. Like they need to figure out how to make the add tier more than 6% of its business, right? Like things like that. That's where they're going to really grow the business. Yes and no. I mean, look, I think that the add tier has been incremental. Okay, I want to be clear. When when you only had one way to pay for the service and that was by subscription fee, I do think you were limiting yourself by not offering people the ability to pay with their time if they wanted, all right? That said, the revenue per user on the add tier is still below the revenue per user on the subscription tier, right? So you're still very much like growing that business and you're going to do $3 billion of add revenue this year. They're forecast relative to a 2030 target of $9 billion. $9 billion is a real number. It matters, but we're still talking, that's still less than 25% of the existing revenue, right? When we're talking about like what can be the truly value unlocking for the business, I think you have to have something outside of the walls of what they're doing right now. So I talk about the films. I know you say like, hey, it's not going to be that big, but it's I think it's incremental marketing. I think it's incremental revenue. I think that you want to be in the physical world. I think you need franchises, consumer products, all these things that you do when you have IP that you can monetize. This episode is brought to you by Fandall Predicts. You can predict the Summer Soccer Showcase action all the way to the final match with FANDUAL Predicts. All you have to do is sign up to get your $25 bonus. From the opening game to the final whistle, stay locked in with every pass, every goal, and every moment that moves us closer to crowning a champion. Sign up now for your $25 bonus on FANDUAL Predicts. Go to FANDUAL.com/Predicts to sign up. That's FANDUAL.com/Predicts to get your $25 bonus. Offered by FANDUAL prediction markets, LLC, a registered futures commission merchant, 18+ restrictions apply. See terms at FANDUAL.com/Predicts/Bonus-Offer-Terms. Well, that brings us to my next topic, M&A. All the things you are saying point to buy a legacy studio. NBC Universal getting split off is the solution here to buy another studio, because the market soured on Netflix exactly when they went after Warner Brothers. Should they double down on that strategy and go after Universal and NBC Universal? The first thing I'm going to say is I can't speculate on whether they will do another deal. Oh, I can. You do that. You do this speculation. I'll just try to blink three times. But look at, okay, so to go back to the WBD deal, obviously very well covered. We wrote about it. You wrote about it. What was the company trying to do? I think it was this thing that I am talking about. More like irons in the fire, more IP, more expertise, more ability to attract me. It's ended a day like you got to have talent coming in and making great stuff, right? The processes that you get with a Warner Brothers studio with 100 years of legacy. And then the HBO brand allowing you possibly to segment the market a little bit. You could have a prestige brand when you, you know, I think it's easier to take a dollar on HBO and a dollar on Netflix than two dollars on Netflix right now, for example, right? So you got some functionality. But that's what Universal. That's why I think they are going to take a look at NBC Universal. Because it is not, it's not just library and IP. It's a experiential business with theme parks, which I think they would like. It's, you know, it's also TV with NBC, which they wouldn't. But it's also sports rights. I mean, they have incredible sports assets. And like you said, an hour watching football is way more valuable than an hour watching, you know, Dave Portnoy. And like, I know it's a lot more expensive, too, and they're renting the rights. So they're not, you know, they're not owning. But if Netflix really wants to accelerate the growth, it seems like that's one of their dwindling options. So your words not mine. But I would say that there is a lot of evidence in the market that the individual components that you just mentioned are things that they would have interest in, right? Obviously they've moved into sports gradually. We wrote this last night. We think that they need to take a big swing. Honestly, is it going to be more expensive? Yes, but maybe some of it is reallocation. Some of it's multiple expansion on your stock because you're looked at as a player now, not, you know, not just a second tier type of thing in the sports world, right? So you have that physical world. I totally agree. Like you invest in something like stranger things and it's hot and you do these Netflix houses and that stuff. I don't know. You wouldn't want to have it as a driver for a bigger part of your business. I think that that's a no brainer. Like awesome. I mean, that those are basically marketing activations that they're doing now. There's no rides. There's no destination feel to the Netflix houses. They could instantly be in that business. And like I said, plug their IP into the universal parks. But I don't think they have much of an appetite for this complete circus of an antitrust review that Paramount is going through with Warner Brothers. And it would be even more aggressive if Netflix got involved, I think, buying another studio. But who knows? Maybe a Paramount can push this through, then it would be a path for Netflix to do the same. I think that that thought process is very reasonable. I also think you brought up the fact that the market didn't react very well to the announcement of them doing the Warner Brothers offer in the first place. It's not reacting particularly well now either, right, with that in the past. So I think, you know, hindsight's always 2020, but it wasn't like they walked away from Warner Brothers and the market came back to them full force with conviction. The questions exist. Well, and the pursuit of Warner Brothers unlocked a lot of these questions that have not gone away. And I think if Ted and Greg could go back and do it all over again, do you think they don't go after Warner's? Well, if you do, you weren't going to get it, sure, right? I mean, it's funny. I will tell you, I think if they didn't know, if they still thought they had a better than 50% chance of getting it done, I think they still do it. That would be my guess. When they did the deal, my question I asked on the call was about the regulatory process, and they were just like, ah, we got like, we, and meaning they're not concerned with that regulatory process. They weren't concerned at the time. All right, well, so overall, you are still bullish on Netflix. They've gone through this before 2022. We all wrote them off. The streaming era was over. Profitability was the goal. And they were just not delivering. This is a very profitable company. They're margins are over 30%. They are the clear leader in the category. It's really just a matter of convincing people like you and Wall Street that they can continue to grow. Continue, I would say a little bit of re-exceleration. Re-sellering to growth, but yes, certainly continue. Look, I think, you know, you say I'm bullish and we have a buy rating. We, you know, like they said, we cut our price target pretty significantly. We, we stand by that. I think that investors have a lot of choice, okay? Within this space, the stock that we comp them to is Meta. Meta is a very different company of course. Yeah, that's the problem. They don't do any content. I don't know. That, that comp to me is not great, but you have to understand that it, what matters is what an investor is choosing between. Yeah. And when you look at the way the market is segmented, Google, Meta, Netflix and Disney are all segmented in the same category. So if you as an investor are benchmarked, you're deciding about buying Netflix from my buy in Meta. And Meta's got, I mean, much more capital intensive, right? Yeah. I would argue there's a lot of risks there, but there's, there's also, you've got the AI upside. What's the AI upside in Netflix right now? They're still sort of like that existential, well, they're using it on 300 programs, cost savings, but you're right. They're not, they're not making glasses. I, I, I hope that they don't, but, but look, I think that there's a little bit more of an existential, maybe threat to the media company. You know, we've heard about it. We've talked about it last year and there's savings. It's actually interesting. I think savings gets redeployed. I hope so. I actually think it'd be good for content creators. I think it'd be good for consumers. That middle tier that has kind of gotten squeezed out between the blockbusters. I think that the savings doesn't follow the bottom line. I think, I think you'll see these companies take more content cuts kind of at the mid-level. So, so you're saying that AI savings are going to ultimately benefit content creators because it's going to cause Netflix to invest more in programs. Not just Netflix, I think, to the industry. I think what you'll see is everybody who saves X amount of money on post-production and pre-produced all these different things that, you know, maybe you wanted to fall in the bottom line, but you look at these, these films that have done great, you know, your obsessions and these types of things. And some of these mid-level films, it just have fallen off because everybody's been so focused on blockbusters. You can take some risk on those again. I think that's where it goes. Maybe, or maybe all the money goes to the item L. That's also another place that we get channeled. Maybe the problem is investors. These are profitable growing companies. Yeah, it's never enough. It's never enough. Never enough. It's never enough. Yeah. Okay. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you. My pleasure. We're back with the call sheet, Craig. You and I had a very frustrating experience the other day. We were at a business lunch at the grill in Beverly Hills during the England Argentina game. So we could hear everyone cheering and screaming at the game while you and I had a very cordial and quiet discussion with an entertainment lawyer. We will not name. Well, and we saw that England had scored a goal of one zero. And then at the end of the dinner, I checked my phone and saw they lost two one. It was very bummed in the last few minutes. Yes, it was a lunch, but yes, I have World Cup fever. I'm sure you do as well. And we're heading into this final with Argentina against Spain. Great matchup. And the question is how much the audience is going to increase from the last World Cup final because the ratings for this World Cup are beyond anyone's expectations, not just Spanish language, but the ratings on Fox are setting records almost every game. If the 2022 final generated 16 million, and that was in December, remember that World Cup was in the winter because it was Qatar, I'm going to set the line for this one at 25 million. Now, this is English language only, not the Telemundo number. And this would be what is that, you know, 40%, 50% increase from the last one. Like, I think we can do it. I think it's going to go over 25 million. I think I would take the under on that. Oh, really? Yeah. Nothing else competing. I don't know in this country. It's in New York. There's going to be celebrities there. They got Justin Bieber and BTS and Madonna as the halftime show. Oh, okay. Sure. Maybe that helps. I think the US games are spiking heavily England is spiking heavily. When it's just like Spain versus France, it was like 11 million. And so this is this is Spain, Argentina. I wonder if it feels like a little bit of a dip in interest for Americans when it's Spain and Argentina. If compared to like England or something, I don't know. Messi is a pretty global star. That's true. It's true. That just feels that that's a big number. You hate soccer. Craig hates soccer. I love soccer. I've been watching all these games. You just picked an arbitrary number that there's no there's no tracking on it. So you just kind of landed on the number that just feels that feels very strong. Okay. For just English language. Yeah. I know. I'm willing to go there though because I have seen the numbers. I remember it's all the big data, the Nielsen big data number, which counts out of home viewing. And there's going to be so many watch parties. All these bars and you know, all these activations in the cities have their outdoor viewing. So they're going to get a big boost out of that. I just think I think you can get there. So we'll see. I like when we disagree. So I have the over on 25 million. You have the under will you be watching? Of course. Yeah. I'm a kid to do it. Yeah. Maybe this is naive of me. But I feel like there's been a stark difference between kind of the US England games and then everyone else. But we'll see. All right. That's the show for today. I want to thank my guest Michael Boris, producer Craig Horobak, artist, Stefano Sanchez, and Jesse Lopez. And I want to thank you. We will see you next week.