Despite having a strong fourth-quarter earnings report and surpassing the 325 million paid subscribers milestone in 2025, “Stranger Things” streamer Netflix’s share prices dropped on Jan. 21 as it remains entrenched in a bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery.
In an earnings call with financial analysts, co-CEO Greg Peters said the company delivered on all of its financial objectives for 2025.
“We delivered 16 percent revenue growth, roughly 30 percent operating profit growth, expanding margins, growing key free cash flow,” Peters said.
“Ad sales 2 1/2 times in 2025. We expect that business to roughly double again in 2026 to about $3 billion. We’re making good progress, and the opportunity ahead of us is massive.”
Hanna Howard, a research analyst at Gabelli Funds, said in a note to The Epoch Times that Netflix had delivered a strong quarter.
“In the near term, it’s really the dynamics around the [mergers and acquisitions] process for [Warner Bros.] that people are focused on,” she said.
“But taking a step back and looking at some of the fundamentals, which probably aren’t going to be huge drivers of these stocks in the near term until some of this [mergers and acquisitions] is worked out, we do think Netflix does have a pretty good quarter.”
Netflix said it was focused on improving core business operations throughout 2026. In its letter to shareholders, the world’s largest streaming service said it plans on increasing the variety and quality of series and films, as well as adding more live events, such as the World Baseball Classic in Japan in March, and growing its podcast and cloud-gaming offerings.
Closing the deal to acquire Warner Bros. would complement Netflix’s production capabilities and bring the prestigious HBO brand in-house, according to Peters.
“You got great producers, great developers, and we intend to continue to produce shows for third parties and being a leading supplier to the industry,” he said.
“Then you get to the streaming side of things. You’ve got HBO. It’s very complementary to our existing service and business, so owning HBO will allow us to further evolve our plan structure, allow us to deliver more series, more film, more value to consumers, and will leverage our global footprint and our streaming expertise to make that an even better service for consumers.”
Netflix for 2026 forecasts total revenue between $50.7 billion and $51.7 billion. Its streaming business logged 96 billion hours of viewing time in the second half of 2025, buoyed in large part by the final season of “Stranger Things,” which generated 120 million views.
Netflix said on Jan. 20 that the boards of the streaming service and Warner Bros. had unanimously approved the all-cash offer for Warner Bros. Closing is dependent on Warner Bros. spinning off its Discovery Global business and obtaining regulatory approvals. The transaction is expected to close in 12 to 18 months.
Revising its offer to an all-cash transaction “simplifies the transaction structure, provides greater certainty of value for [Warner Bros.] stockholders, and accelerates the path to a [Warner Bros.] stockholder vote,” Netflix said.
