Netflix Earnings Next Week Should Be OK But Not Great

Earnings season is back. Banks, always the early birds, began reporting Friday and next week Netflix kicks off tech earnings season with its third quarter report on Wednesday. Big tech—Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta Platforms and the rest—don’t start reporting until the week after. But Netflix’s report will give us plenty to chew over. It will give us an update on the streaming video market, where the halcyon days of rapid growth have given way to cost-cutting and price increases.

Netflix, at least, is making money, unlike its rivals. And it is growing, although not by a whole lot. The company has projected 7.5% topline growth for the quarter, and analysts are a tad more optimistic, based on the consensus estimate of 7.7% reported by S&P Global Market Intelligence. While that’s nothing to write home about, it would be a big improvement from Netflix’s past three quarters, where revenue growth has hovered between 2% and 4%. That weak growth rate reflected the fact that Netflix hasn’t raised prices in more than 18 months, while its subscriber numbers are growing slowly.