Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript April 16, 2026

Netflix, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $1.23, expectations were $0.763.

Spencer Wong: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Netflix, Inc. Q1 2026 earnings interview. I am Spencer Wong, VP of finance and capital markets. Joining me today are co-CEOs, Theodore Sarandos and Gregory Peters, and CFO, Spencer Neumann. As a reminder, we will be making forward-looking statements, and actual results may vary. We will now take questions submitted by the analyst community, and we will begin on the topic of our results and outlook. The first question comes from Robert Fishman of MoffettNathanson. This question is: Can you speak to your full-year margin guidance and how it compares to prior guidance? With the Warner Brothers deal costs and beyond content spending, where else are you accelerating investment in 2026?

Gregory Peters: Perhaps I can kick this one off and step back with a high-level framing. Of course, it is early in the year. There is still plenty of time to go and plenty of work left to do. But we have seen really good progress so far in this first quarter that builds on the solid momentum and results from 2025. Given that, we are maintaining our guidance and strong outlook for organic growth that we established for 2026: revenue growth of 12% to 14% and operating margin at 31.5%. That includes roughly doubling the advertising business to about $3 billion. We ended last year with more than 325 million paid members, and as that number continues to grow, we are entertaining an audience that is approaching a billion people, which is an exciting milestone to strive for and to achieve.

Even given that number, we still have plenty of room to grow into our addressable market. From an addressable household perspective that have good data and a smart TV, we are still under 45% penetrated. We think that number is roughly 800 million, and it grows every year. We have captured about 7% of addressable revenue in countries and categories that we currently directly participate in. We now estimate that is $670 billion as of 2026, and that number grows year over year as well. We estimate that we account for only 5% of TV view share globally. By pretty much any measure, we have tons of room for growth still ahead of us.

Theodore Sarandos: I would add, looking ahead, we are focused on three big priorities. Number one, deliver even more entertainment value for our members, and we do that by continuing to strengthen our core offering—series and films, originals and licensed. We are also pushing into new categories that are really exciting, like our further expansion into podcasts—we announced a few exciting new ones today—adding more regional live sports events, like the incredible event we just did in Japan with the World Baseball Classic, and growing our games offering, including the brand-new kids gaming app. Number two, we are leveraging technology to improve the service—from how it is delivered to how to find great things to watch, and now even how content is created and produced.

Number three, we are improving monetization through a combination of broad distribution—mostly organic, supplemented with some great partners— increasingly sophisticated pricing and pricing plans, and a great and growing ad business as Greg just said. These features help position us to deliver multiyear growth beyond the 12% to 14% that we expect to deliver this year. At Netflix, Inc. we embrace change, thrive on competition, and stay focused on constant and consistent improvements—the things that make us faster and better than the competition in whatever form it takes. We feel great about the business and the organic growth opportunity ahead. We are as energized as ever to achieve our mission to entertain the world. Spence, maybe you could talk a second about the WB deal cost and the guide.

Q&A Session

Spencer Wong: Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Ted. So with respect to the Warner Brothers deal.

Spencer Neumann: And those costs and how it impacts the guide: you may recall back in January, our initial forecast or guidance for the year was carrying $275 million of cost for M&A-related activity. That was not just Warner Brothers, actually. One item we were carrying was the Interpositive acquisition. It was not announced yet, but it was in our guidance, and that carries through our OpEx, which impacts operating margin. For Warner Brothers specifically, even though we walked away from the deal, some of our initially planned costs for the deal will not fully materialize, but some that we were planning to carry into 2027 were pulled forward into 2026. When you put all that together, we are still in the ballpark of the total we were projecting for M&A-related expenses in the year. There is no material impact on our operating margin outlook. As a result, there is no reflection of some increase or acceleration in other expenses in the year.

Spencer Wong: Thanks, Spence. Thanks, Ted. Thanks, Greg. Following up on that question, we have one from Sean Diffely of Morgan Stanley. His question is: What have been your biggest learnings from the Warner Brothers experience, and does it in any way change your appetite for M&A or capital structure going forward?

Theodore Sarandos: At the risk of being a broken record, we said from the beginning that the WB deal was a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have. We are very confident in the core business. Going into it, our biggest risk was losing focus on our core business while working on the transaction. As you can see from our Q1 results, we did not lose focus. We are very encouraged by the team’s ability to stay focused on our core business while exploring this opportunity. Historically, we have been builders, not buyers, so there were questions about our ability to do a deal of this size. We learned that our teams were more than up to the task. We learned a lot about deal execution and early integration. We are proud of the teams that did the work.

We are proud to have won the bid. We were confident in our ability to get to the finish line with regulators for the approvals we needed. Mostly, we really built our M&A muscle. The most important benefit of this entire exercise was that we tested our investment discipline. When the cost of this deal grew beyond the net value to our business and to our shareholders, we were willing to put emotion and ego aside and walk away. Doing it at this level sets up our teams to understand that is the expectation of them day to day. We met a bunch of great people in WBD during this process, so if there is any emotion in all of this, it was the disappointment of not getting to work with those folks. We do come through this with no change in our capital allocation philosophy.

We invest in the business, both organically and opportunistically with M&A, like you just saw with Interpositive. We do that while maintaining strong liquidity and returning excess cash to shareholders through share repurchase. M&A remains a tool to help us achieve our goals, and as you can see with the WB deal, we will remain very disciplined in how we approach it.

Spencer Wong: Thank you, Ted. I will move us along now to the next topic, which is engagement. The question comes from Vikram Kesavabhotla of Baird: Last quarter, you shared that your primary quality metric for engagement achieved an all-time high in 2025. How is this metric performing so far in 2026? What are some examples of the data points that inform your measurement of quality?

Gregory Peters: I will take this one. First, volume of engagement is still relevant. We track it and seek to grow it. In Q1, view hours were up at a similar rate of growth to what we saw in 2025, despite having the Winter Olympics—17 days of robust streaming competition—land in Q1 as well. But while view hours are important, they are just one of several metrics we look at, and we are increasingly making that a more sophisticated view. Member quality is an important part of that sophistication, with several associated signals, and in Q1 that primary member quality metric hit another all-time high. I am not going to detail how we compose our metrics; they take time and effort to build and prove out, and I am sure competitors would like that cheat sheet.

We build confidence in our metrics, and specifically this member quality metric, by evaluating their predictive and explanatory power to primary metrics like retention. That is why we are clear that improving that number improves the business. As we invest in new forms of content, we also have to learn how the new programming provides different kinds of value. Live is a great example. It often drives significant viewing value for members, albeit with fewer view hours than a scripted series, and it has different acquisition characteristics. We continually build models for how that programming matters to our members and supports the business, and then we can bid appropriately.

Spencer Wong: Thanks, Greg. Our next question on engagement comes from Rich Greenfield of LightShed Partners. Nielsen adjusted their methodology—the end result was lower streaming viewership and higher broadcast and cable viewership, albeit the trendlines were similar. Nielsen has delayed implementing these changes into its monthly Gauge report until 2026. The base of Netflix, Inc. viewership will be lower but also have more room to take share. How do you think about the coming impact, especially on your advertising revenue?

Gregory Peters: Nielsen’s methodology change in the Gauge reporting is a change in how they calculate the national TV universe. It is not a change in how people actually watch TV. It changes Nielsen’s numbers, not actual viewing behaviors. Specifically, the new approach reduces the weight of streaming-only households and increases the weight of linear households, which makes streaming look smaller and broadcast/cable look larger on a relative basis as they measure and report. We, of course, have actual data on how much members stream, and we include that in our engagement report. That methodology is straightforward, and other streamers have started to measure views in the same way. As to advertising, Nielsen Gauge is not the currency for the video marketplace.

Given that there is no change in consumer behavior or amount of viewing related to this shift, none of this changes our effectiveness or our aspirations in ads. We continue to expect to deliver $3 billion in advertising revenue this year; we have not adjusted that target. On your point about growth potential, independent of this shift, we still see tremendous opportunity to win more moments of truth—especially the most valuable moments. With our current position of being less than 5% of global TV time, we have a ton of room to grow.

Spencer Wong: Thanks, Greg. We have several questions about our content and content strategy. First, from John Hulik of UBS: Any details you can share about the World Baseball Classic viewership? Are there other similar sports and live event opportunities that can appeal to a global audience and drive engagement?

Theodore Sarandos: Thanks for asking about the World Baseball Classic, because it was a hit. It was the most-watched program we have ever had in Japan and the biggest global baseball streaming event of all time, with 31.4 million viewers. Events like this are important because, as Greg said, they drive outsized business impact and are proof that all engagement is not created equal. The WBC drove the largest single sign-up day ever in Japan. Japan led our Q1 member growth around the world and had its highest quarter of paid net adds in our history. It was also the first big regional live event for us outside of the United States, and we got to flex a new muscle—streaming multiple games concurrently—so a big expansion of our capabilities. We were excited, the fans were thrilled, and the leagues were excited. Much more to come.

Gregory Peters: It was also a great example of how we were firing on all cylinders cross-functionally. Our marketing and partnership teams worked to bring this to Japanese consumers in a friendly way. It was impressive to see everyone organize around that.

Theodore Sarandos: And a great shot in the arm for our ad sales group in Japan. One other thing on it—not to dismiss WBC.

Spencer Neumann: Think about it more broadly because, as great as it was—and it was great—you may notice that APAC was our strongest FX-neutral revenue growth market for the quarter. It was not just because of this. We had strong performance across APAC: a great quarter in India, a really strong quarter in Korea, and Southeast Asia showed strength. Across the board in APAC, we executed—it was not just one title or one country.

Theodore Sarandos: I would add it was exciting to see people pick up recent original series so that viewing went up—you saw some of those shows pop back into the top 10. The success of One Piece on the heels of the WBC created a great halo.

Spencer Wong: I will take the next question from Robert Fishman of MoffettNathanson: With the NFL in the market for new packages, do you judge ROI on live event content spending the same way as scripted content, or does adding NFL games give you the ability to drive higher CPMs and ad growth that one-off scripted shows would not deliver?

Theodore Sarandos: That is a great question. First, our sports strategy is unchanged. We are most interested in big breakthrough events, less so in regular season packages. Everything we pursue has to make economic sense in the ways you just talked through, and we consider all the benefits from both viewing and the ads business. Sports is an important piece of our live strategy, which also includes other big live events—Skyscraper Live, the Star Search reboot with live voting, the BTS comeback concert. We have had a number of sports successes, including our Opening Night MLB game with the Yankees and the Giants, our Christmas Day NFL games, some big fights, and the WBC in Japan. The NFL is a great property and delivers value as part of our total offering.

We are in discussions and think there is an opportunity to expand the relationship—within the same strategy focused on creating big events. We have learned a lot about what works and how to value the NFL and live generally over the last couple of years, and this will inform how we have those discussions and help us be even more disciplined. We announced Tuesday a multiyear deal with CONCACAF for rights in Mexico, in addition to women’s World Cup rights in the United States and Canada, and our first big global M&A event with Ronda Rousey and Carano. We are ramping up our sports events globally and local-for-local, both in volume and profile, because we bring and receive a lot of value—and, most importantly, our members receive a lot of value.

Spencer Wong: Thanks, Ted. Our next question comes from Peter Supino of Wolfe Research: Help us better understand your business model in podcasting—think he means your business strategy in podcasts.

Theodore Sarandos: We talked about it in the letter, but even in very early days we are seeing data indicating incremental engagement on the platform. How do we know it is incremental? Two things jump out. One is daytime consumption: podcast consumption indexes to daytime hours on Netflix, Inc., which allows us to capture a time when we historically have less engagement. The other is that it indexes much more to mobile. Podcasting is more mobile, and professional TV and film historically make up a small percentage of mobile viewing, so it is great to meet our members where they are—even when they are enjoying other forms of entertainment. We have been building out a great lineup of podcasts, both licensed and owned—shows like The Bill Simmons Podcast, The Breakfast Club, Therapist from Jake Shang (which I have been waiting to say all day), Pardon My Take—all doing great.

We have our own podcasts as well, like The White House with Michael Irvin and The Pete Davidson Show. Our companion podcasts have been great for superfans, like the Bridgerton Official Podcast. And today we announced new podcasts from Brian Williams, Evan Ross Katz, Steven Su, Ellison Barber, David Quang—the list keeps growing, and it is very promising.

Spencer Wong: Great. We will now shift to advertising. This question comes from Dan Salmon of New Street Research: Can you share more on the growth of your total advertiser base? What proportion of advertisers are being serviced directly by the Netflix, Inc. sales team, and what proportion are buying on Netflix, Inc. through third-party DSP partners? Are you still largely focused on the top 500 brands, or is a mid-market strategy beginning to emerge?

Gregory Peters: We will do our best to handle them all. The biggest benefit we got from moving to our own ad tech stack is making it easier for advertisers to buy on our service. Additionally, we have added more DSPs—more ways to buy—and we are seeing significant growth in programmatic, which is on its way to becoming more than 50% of our non-live ads business. Due to those moves, as well as improving go-to-market capabilities, more sales force, and building out our ads products, our advertiser base grew over 70% year over year in 2025 to more than 4 thousand advertisers. That expansion is a key indicator of the health of the business. Today, we are still concentrating on the largest buyers, which are serviced primarily by the Netflix, Inc.

sales teams—either directly or with our sales team driving buying behavior through DSPs. Over time, we expect continued growth in the number of advertisers. We are pushing in that direction, and we think the percentage who buy programmatically will increase, and therefore programmatic share of ad revenue will go up. As we scale programmatic and broaden our advertiser base, we can follow the time-tested model of expanding iteratively into larger and larger pools of advertisers.

Spencer Wong: Thanks, Greg. Next, a question around plans and pricing from Vikram Kesavabhotla of Baird: What informed your decision to raise subscription prices in the United States recently? What are your early observations regarding the impact on customer acquisition and churn in the region?

Gregory Peters: This change was part of our plan for some time. We continually monitor signals from our members—quality-weighted engagement, plan selection, plan moves, and retention, which is industry-leading. We see improvements in value delivered to our members well in advance of making a price adjustment, and those signals informed this and all price changes. Our initial full-year guidance factors in the pricing adjustments we expect to make throughout the year. It is very rare that we have an unexpected pricing change. As for the most recent changes, the early signals are in line with expectations and similar to historical performance with price changes in the United States. The rollout is still ongoing, but indications are consistent with what we have seen before.

Our pricing philosophy is consistent: we look to provide more and more value, invest revenue successfully, and occasionally, when we have added more value, ask members to contribute more so we can invest in delivering even more entertainment value. We think we are delivering one of the best entertainment values that has ever existed. As a comparison, in the United States right now, Netflix, Inc. subscribers are paying the least per hour of viewing compared to other SVOD offerings—in some cases, you would have to pay two times per hour to get a competitive service. Our ads plan at $8.99 in the United States is a great, highly accessible entry point and an incredible value.

Spencer Neumann: To add to that value and how we see it in the metrics, look at retention and churn. We saw stronger retention across the board this quarter; every region was better year over year. That is encouraging in terms of the value we provide and aligns with the primary engagement value metric Greg mentioned, where we had a record in Q4 of last year and a record again in Q1 of this year, which is playing out in the numbers.

Spencer Wong: Thanks, Spence. A couple of questions on gaming, the first from Eric Sheridan of Goldman Sachs: You are in your fifth year of the gaming strategy. What have been the key learnings? How do platform games change user consumption habits? What are the most interesting areas to invest behind gaming in the coming years?

Gregory Peters: I think “platform games” here just means games on our platform. At the highest level, we see a significant market opportunity—$150 billion in consumer spend ex-China, ex-Russia, not including ad revenue. That number is getting bigger. A significant part of that market faces issues like new player acquisition or low-friction discovery and play—areas we are well positioned to improve. We have been building foundations: the ability to develop games, bring games onto our service, connect those games with players, and give players high-quality experiences. As with film and series—and as hypothesized—we have learned that gameplay can have a positive impact on member retention, as well as driving acquisition, although the observed acquisition effect has been small to date, which is consistent with our maturity and consumer expectations of us as a gaming platform.

A key user dynamic we have repeatedly observed is that delivering a fan of a film or series an interactive experience in that same universe not only extends the audience’s engagement, but also creates synergy that reinforces both mediums—interactive and noninteractive both do better. That further drives engagement and delivers more value. We are investing in games that reflect our other beloved IP or events and give fans interactive experiences that extend those universes; in games on TV, a new canvas for players and developers; and in kids, providing a dedicated experience. While we have been building this for a couple of years, we are still scratching the surface of what we can ultimately do. We have been building infrastructure and core capabilities, and now we are increasingly able to deliver more of the kinds of experiences that move us toward our vision.

There is tons more work to do, but it is fun to get to this stage. You will see increasingly interesting releases from us in the year to come. We will continue to ramp our investment—still small relative to overall content spend—based on demonstrated performance and growing returns.

Spencer Wong: Great. And, Greg, a follow-up on games from Brian Pitts of BMO Capital: The recent announcement of Netflix, Inc. Playground is seemingly one of your biggest moves into video games to date. Would you help us understand how you will measure success with Playground and the incremental value you expect for your broader subscriber base? Maybe start by explaining what Netflix, Inc. Playground is.

Gregory Peters: Playground is essentially a separate app for games for kids. Kids represent one of our four key focus areas for games—kids, narrative, party/puzzle, and mainstream games. Our goal is to become a destination where kids’ favorite worlds come to life through games and interactive experiences. This extends a long history in which we have treated kids as a special audience that deserves special care. We provide kids with a dedicated experience and parents with tools—ratings, parental controls, PIN controls, etc. Playground extends that philosophy into games. It includes a growing collection of kids’ games in one app so they can navigate between them; fully curated, age-appropriate titles based on beloved shows and movies—think Peppa Pig, Dr. Seuss, Bad Dinosaurs—no ads, no in-app purchases.

It also fits kids’ natural viewing habits, as a significant portion already happens on mobile and tablet, and it is all added value included in your membership. We are seeing encouraging signals: as we add more kids’ games, we have seen strong growth in engagement through both new titles and improved discovery on existing titles. Ultimately, we see an important long-term opportunity to deliver more entertainment to kids in ways parents feel good about, not just across games but across TV and film as well.

Spencer Wong: Thanks, Greg. Next question from Eric Sheridan of Goldman Sachs: Entering 2026, how would you characterize the current competitive landscape for content? Are you seeing any differences in competitive intensity by geography, language, or format?

Theodore Sarandos: Competition is not new for Netflix, Inc. Consumers have always had incredible choices in entertainment, and we have continued to grow by offering enormous value. Great projects are immensely competitive, and those are the projects we want. We have been pleased that Bela and the content team have been able to land some of the most competitive projects recently—Strangers with Gwyneth Paltrow attached to star, based on the New York Times bestselling book; Rabbit Rabbit with Adam Driver, directed by Philip Barantini, who directed Adolescents for us—both incredibly competitive projects we were able to land. It is not just about paying the most. Relationships matter, particularly when there are many competitive choices.

Providing a great experience for creators, delivering a big audience, and generating buzz are what we do. We are seeing a lot of repeat business, the ultimate sign we are doing our job well. Today, Beef Season 2 starts. The show’s creator, Sunny Lee, did the first season, which was the most honored limited series of the year when it came out two years ago—45 individual awards—and it was a hit worldwide. We just did an overall deal with Sunny; he will be creating for Netflix, Inc. for years. The cast—Oscar Isaac, recently in Frankenstein and Golden Globe–nominated; he has another film this year and another project we just greenlit; Carey Mulligan, who has done multiple projects for Netflix, Inc., including her Oscar-nominated performance in Maestro; she is in Narnia coming up later this year, she was in Mudbound and The Dig; Charles Melton, a Golden Globe nominee for May; Cailee Spaeny, who was just in Wake Up Deadman—the whole cast is Netflix, Inc.

family. Running Point comes out next week, another new hit series with Mindy Kaling; we love the relationship. It is not just in the United States. Álex Pina, who created La Casa de Papel, has done multiple projects since, including one he is working on now. If repeat business is a sign of success, I am excited about what we are doing. We also think about competition in terms of those we are competing for projects and members with—and those we are customers of. Running Point is produced by Warner Brothers for us. We license shows like Watson and Mayor of Kingstown from Paramount. We have a Pay-1 deal with Sony; we have one with NBCUniversal that includes DreamWorks Animation and Illumination. Our investment in those films, co-productions, and licensing feeds the entire movie ecosystem around the world.

While it is a little unusual to be both customer and competitor, it is not unusual in entertainment, and we manage those relationships well.

Spencer Wong: Thanks, Ted. Eric Sheridan from Goldman also has another question, this time on AI: How does the company’s approach to the role AI can play in the creative process continue to evolve? With the announced acquisition of Interpositive, can you discuss the decision around that deal measured against your broader strategy?

Theodore Sarandos: In general, we expect GenAI to help make content better—better tools and processes. Netflix, Inc. will remain at the forefront in exploring and innovating AI in the creative process. Given our technology DNA, unique data assets, and tremendous scale, we see great opportunities to leverage new technical capabilities across every aspect of the business. AI will deliver benefits for our members, creators, and employees. On the content side specifically, it takes a great artist to make great art—AI will not change that—but AI will give those artists better tools to bring visions to life in ways we are just scratching the surface on. Today, talent leverages these tools for set references, previsualization, VFX sequence prep, and shot planning—all of which also improve on-set safety, which is not talked about enough.

With our acquisition of Interpositive, we think it accelerates our GenAI capability because it is proprietary technology created specifically for filmmakers and filmmaking, different from other GenAI video applications. While our ownership of Interpositive is very new, we have generated interest with creators who have spent time with the tools, and we are seeing momentum build around adoption.

Gregory Peters: To pick it up there, the factors that inform where we should be developing technology—where we have a differential or unique capability to invest in generative AI that delivers returns to the business—include data (its uniqueness and scale) and where there are products or business processes at scale to attach this technology and get leverage. Content production, which Ted went through, is a big one. Member experience is another. We have been in personalization and recommendation for two decades, but we still see tremendous room to make it better by leveraging newer technologies. Recommendation systems based on new model architectures not only improve current personalization but also let us iterate and improve more quickly—adding support for different content types much more efficiently.

As noted in the letter, in the last quarter these new capabilities drove increased engagement with the service—that is super exciting to see. The better we execute here, the more our product experience acts as a force multiplier to the large content investments we make. The last area I will mention is advertising. We are growing scale there and see an opportunity to leverage AI within our Netflix, Inc. Ad Suite—making it easier to design new creative formats, custom ads, improve contextual relevance, and roll them out more quickly and effectively, allowing partners to leverage them more easily.

Spencer Wong: Great. We have time for one last question, from Rich Greenfield of LightShed Partners. He asks about Reed’s decision to not stand for reelection at our upcoming annual meeting: You have talked publicly that Reed Hastings preferred to build versus buy. Was Netflix, Inc.’s decision to pursue Warner Brothers a key factor in his timing of leaving the Netflix, Inc. board this year?

Theodore Sarandos: Sorry for anyone looking for palace intrigue—no. Reed was a big champion for that deal. He championed it with the board. The board unanimously supported the deal. We had perfect alignment between management and the board on the Warner Brothers deal. That had nothing to do with it.

Spencer Wong: And, Ted, do you want to close us out with some words on the decision?

Theodore Sarandos: Absolutely. Reed Hastings, our founder and our board chair, let us know he has decided not to run for reelection to our board at the next shareholder meeting. It is unusual for a founder to step away from the board of the company after succession, but Reed is no ordinary founder. The first time I met Reed in 1999, he said he was building a company that would be around long after him, and that requires succession. When Reed took the first steps in this more than a decade ago, he said he would hang around for about another ten years. It has only been six, but this is Reed’s style—make decisions and move fast. We have a long history of going from brainstorm to scale at breakneck speed. Reed will remain the chairman and a member of our board through his current term.

The board and the Nominating and Governance Committee will take the next steps in reshaping the board in the months to come. On a personal note, I have been fortunate to have great bosses who inspired me, coached me, and gave me opportunities. Reed did these things at unimaginable levels. Reed is an economist and an engineer in his head, but a teacher in his heart. He not only shared the spotlight—a rarity in Hollywood—he pushed me into the spotlight, celebrated wins, coached through misses, and made me the executive I am today. I am forever grateful. He built a company of risk takers and a culture where character matters and nobody rests in the pursuit of excellence. I have loved working with and for Reed through amazing twists and turns, and he has modeled what it is to be a leader and a friend.

I was reminded of a quote from Max De Pree: “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leader.” Reed Hastings is the ultimate artful leader, and he leaves me and Greg enormous shoes to fill. In the spirit of an artful leader’s work in progress, I say to Reed, thank you.

Gregory Peters: Ted, I will join you. From the very beginning, Reed established the standard for what leadership and culture look like at Netflix, Inc. His vision, willingness to take risks, to embrace and motivate change, to be transparent even when it is hard, and his total commitment to our values and to always putting our members and the company first have shaped every part of what Netflix, Inc. is today. The innovations Reed championed did not just build Netflix, Inc.; they helped move a whole industry forward. They expanded what is possible for storytellers and audiences around the world. We bring stories from around the world to audiences in ways that were not imaginable before. We got to this point because Reed has a way of pushing you to think bigger, to be more honest with others and yourself, and to own your decisions—always in a way that made you feel supported and trusted.

He would debate his perspective with tremendous passion to get us to the best, most informed answer, then support you in your decision with equal passion even when he personally disagreed—and celebrate you with even greater passion if you ended up being right. That style has shaped who I and many others across Netflix, Inc. are today. A lesson I learned from Reed—perhaps the most meaningful and apropos to this moment—is the realization that while many of us spend tremendous effort building something we believe in, how we hand that work off to someone else is of equal importance. We should put equal effort, thoughtfulness, and planning into that transition as we did into all that came before. When my time to transition comes, I aspire to be as selfless, disciplined, and graceful as Reed has been.

Reed, thank you for the trust you placed in us and the example you set. We will carry those principles every day.

Spencer Wong: Thank you, Reed. I echo that as well.

Spencer Neumann: Same here. You could not have said it better. I get chills thinking about it. One thing standing out for me right now, which is real time, is that big singular red “N” of the Netflix, Inc. logo, because it seems so appropriate—Reed, you are literally an “N” of one, forever in the DNA of this place. Thanks for everything.

Spencer Wong: Great. With that, we will conclude the call. Thank you, everybody, for joining us, and we will see you next quarter.