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Bank of America Representative
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Bloomberg Audio Studios Announcer
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News
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Bloomberg Breaking News Anchor
this is a breaking news update from Bloomberg.
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Eric Clark
Instant reaction and analysis from our 3,000 journalists and analysts around the world.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
We are focused on Netflix. We're going to bring up the trade for you because we did see the stock bouncing around in the after hours. I remind you that it's down more than 20% year to date, down more than 30% since hitting a recent high back on April 16. That's when it reported earnings last time and there was disappointment about revenues and call it so two quarters in a row. Quick check on some of the numbers in terms of Netflix. And we did see that as we mentioned, second consecutive quarter of slowing sales. The company projected revenue of 12.9 billion in earnings of 82 cents a share. So again, a second consecutive quarter of slowing sales growth. And so investors have got to be having some questions about, you know, where does growth come from and what's the future future for Netflix. Although let's point out, still the giant.
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Felix Gillette
When it comes to streaming, it is still the giant. I want to bring in a great roundtable to kick off our coverage. We got Felix Gillette with us, Bloomberg News Media and Entertainment editor. He's here in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. Also joining us, Eric Clark, the CIO of ACUR Global Advisors. He focuses on consumer stocks including Netflix. He also manages the Alpha brand's Consumption Leaders etf. Erik, I want to start with you because in the Alpha Brands Consumption Leaders ETF ticker logo, the fifth biggest holding after Nvidia, Broadcom, Eli Lilly and TSMC is Netflix. After a report like this, are you buying? Are you selling? Are you holding? What are you doing?
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Eric Clark
Hey, Tim, great to see you. You know, this is a continuation of our conversation last last quarter. We, you know, it's a consumer utility and I have nothing too bad to say other than, you know, quarter to quarter things are going to bounce around. We still believe in the story, we still believe in the growth opportunities. It's summertime, so viewership might be a little lower. We're all out having fun at the beach and you know, they bought back, you know, 4.7 billion of stock. There's still 27 billion left on the authorization. So that's the biggest quarterly buyback in history. So I'm happy to see that they took advantage of the weakness. That's what I was hoping and expecting them to do. To me, that sends a little bit of a signal but, you know, every quarter is a little bit noisy. I don't think anything's changed with the story. You know, in many ways it's a stock that was outside of the tech and the AI theme and you know, they've discarded everything that isn't tech and AI up until the last two weeks. And so, you know, this utility now at 21 times looks pretty attractive as a stable, predictable business with big free cash flow and a big buyback.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
When does a utility with second consecutive quarters of slowing sales growth, when does that trend become worrisome? Does it have to be 3? Does it have to be 4? Does it have to be more? What does it have to be?
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Eric Clark
Well, I, you know, I think it's less about that and just more about when we get into the fall when engagement starts to rise again. We know they're pretty comfortable with ad revenue rising. That's high margin business free cash flow or you know, free cash flow generation, really good margin still creeping up. So I'm not worried about a dime here or 5 cent there. In the end, a utility has a very good defensive range of earnings and that's what we see with Netflix. We've just transitioned from a go go growth stock to more a growth at a reasonable price stock into the, into the core. So in some ways, we've changed the shareholder base over from one kind of growth investor to a more stable core investor.
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Felix Gillette
I want to bring in Felix Gillette. He's Bloomberg News media and entertainment editor. He's also the author of it's not tv, the Spectacular Rise, Revol and Future of hbo. He joins us here on set. So Eric keeps saying utility over and over again, but when I think of utility, I think I only have one utility. Like, you know, the provider of my water, the electricity or Internet into my home. Yeah, in my home I have. Oh, my God. Well, now I, now I pay for Fox One, thanks to the World Cup. So that's another 30 bucks or whatever. But I got Netflix, I got Paramount, I got hbo, Max, I got all of these things right now. And I, I don't know. Like, do you agree that it is that Netflix is a utility?
- [05:58]
Well, I mean, I think at some level, Hollywood is still a hits business, Right. And, you know, Netflix hasn't had huge hits so far this year. I mean, I think it's that simple. And you think it's also, these things are very cyclical. I mean, think of the year Netflix had in 2025. They had the last season of Stranger Things, which was huge. They had, you know, the last season of Squid Games, which was huge. They had, you know, K Pop Demon Hunters, the biggest movie in the history of the service. And so coming off that, there's a little bit of a hangover. And I think every other streaming service would probably look at Netflix's engagement and their numbers and they kill for it. But compared to Netflix's 2025, yeah, the engagement isn't as good as it was last year. And, you know, I think, you know, they'll probably bounce back. They've had modest successes. They've had, you know, animated movies like Swap that have done well, just not as well as K Pop Demon Hunters. And, you know, I think that combined with making the bold move to try and go out and buy Warner Brothers Discovery and then, you know, at a certain point, losing out to Paramount, Skydance, like that, those two things combined, you get a narrative of, oh, what's wrong with Netflix? But in some ways, you know, it reminds me a lot of, like, I
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
forgot they were going after that. Isn't that funny?
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Felix Gillette
Investors didn't like it.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
Yeah, I know.
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Felix Gillette
They were going after it.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
Anyway, I interrupted go.
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Felix Gillette
Well, I was going to say it reminds me a little bit of like, you know, in the previous era, what happened with hbo, if you remember, you know, when HBO was at the top of the previous era of Home Entertainment. 2007. When the Sopranos ended, everyone was like, oh, my God, what's going to happen to HBO people? The competitors are, oh, it's called, let's call it HBOver. You know, that was the nickname that year. And everyone was, oh, it's a crisis. And then, you know, a little bit time passes along comes Game of Thrones, right?
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Geeta Ranganathan
Yeah.
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Felix Gillette
Richard Plepler says, hold my beer.
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Yeah. And so it's like, you know, I think, you know, nothing's radically changed about Netflix's program and strategy.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
What do you make of. They're going to post their what we watch report yearly versus semi, annually. Is that a big deal, Felix?
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Geeta Ranganathan
Yeah.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
I mean, why do they do that?
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Felix Gillette
I think that shows a little bit of a lack of confidence, you know, and, you know, scaling back what they share with all of us. I think, you know, there's been a lot of reporting, including by Lucas Shaw here, about the drop in viewership on the second seasons of some of their hit shows. And so, yeah, I think they're feeling a little bit sensitive about that. And they're also going through this phase now where they're kind of throwing things against the wall. You know, they're trying podcast video podcasts. They brought in, you know, some big names, Jay Shetty, people of that caliber, and they're going to see if that works. You know, can they drive up some of the daytime viewing, which hasn't been great for the service, you know. Yeah. Like, who is who? What are you thinking?
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Yeah, it's just I'm thinking, like, why are you watching Netflix in the middle of this?
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
Well, some people can't.
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Felix Gillette
No, I know, I know everybody has different work schedules and stuff, but like Netflix, it's. So much has changed in a dozen years. I mean, Netflix used to.
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Eric Clark
They used to.
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Felix Gillette
I mean, Sandvine used to tout these numbers that, like, at any given moment in the evening, Netflix accounts for like X percentage of all traffic on the Internet, because that's what. That's the only thing there was to stream.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
Right.
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Felix Gillette
And that picture has changed so much.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
There's a lot of choices.
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Felix Gillette
Yeah.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
Eric Clark, do you come on back. CIO over at Acuvest Global Advisors. Do you buy if the stock is down? It is about 5% or so. Do you find this a good entry Point then?
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Felix Gillette
8.4%.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
Oh, forgive me. So it's down even more.
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Eric Clark
Yeah, well, the options markets were predicting this, so, you know, lots of things happen from an options markets to somehow mirror what people are playing, it's easy to push things around. But yes, I would like to buy a little bit more. I'm not going to get crazy. We're going to just nibble. When the company using the biggest buyback is nibbling, then I'm certainly going to be nibbling. And again, I always ask people what's going to make you churn your Netflix, And I would love to see Netflix do better, higher quality content. They have a big enough library at this point, but they don't have to just flood the their library with stuff. Now let's focus on quality number one, and let's add more sports and live entertainment number two, and that'll right the ship, in my opinion. So, yeah, I would love to take advantage of it down here. It's just too cheap. And again, it's, to me, utility and a staple is kind of synonymous with the same thing. And I don't know what it would take. They've, they've raised prices 5% a year on average since they started this in 08. So that's a nice little tailwind as well. And it's still the cheapest game in town from an entertainment perspective. So there's just a lot to like, even if it's out of favor right now. And now it's cheap.
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Felix Gillette
Felix, what do you think of Eric's quality comment? Because when I think of like this, I think I subscribed to all the streaming services and when, when I think of the one that has sort of the lowest number of overall titles but the highest quality, honestly, Apple is doing a really good job.
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Yeah, I would agree with that. And I would also say Apple really aggressively markets their shows and when they have a new show that they believe in, they put a lot of marketing power behind it.
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Their star power. Star power is unbelievable.
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They do, they have great casting, but they also, they let you know that a show is coming. I think with Netflix, sometimes they just put stuff up there and you know you're going to find it. And sometimes I'm amazed that like a new season of a show I've watched previously is out. And I'm like, I, I didn't even
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know that because maybe because the discovery on your, on your homepage or whatever is not, or your home screen is not.
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Yeah, it's probably my kids messing it up with their shows.
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Yeah, it probably is. But that's also Netflix's fault. I mean, that's. Now you're not seeing it.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
Yeah, no, but I agree, like, I go to some of these streaming Platforms and I'm like, God, there's so much stuff and like, and I get off. But Apple, it just feels very clean. It's, you know, it's a fewer few choices or fewer choices, I don't know.
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Felix Gillette
You have to run soon, Felix. So we're going to do a few more with you and then we're going to keep, keep Eric in with us. The HBO side of this, I mean, years ago, who was it? Was it Ted Sarandos who said we want to become HBO before or was it Reed Hastings? It was Ted whose Ted said we want to be HBO before HBO becomes us.
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Geeta Ranganathan
Yeah.
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Felix Gillette
Has Netflix actually become hbo? It doesn't feel like it has.
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No. I think they became much more like cbs. You know, they became like the Everything forever.
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Yeah.
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And I think, you know, now if they had to say who they want to become, I mean, clarity, clearly the, you know, YouTube is occupying that space now and they're worried about YouTube because look at the engagement numbers. I mean, YouTube keeps growing at a faster rate than everybody else and that's the one service out there that really is growing its audience faster than Netflix. And I think so you see Netflix, you know, doing podcasts, doing video podcasts. Now they're going to throw in some short form video from, you know, Conde Nast and buzzfeed, which I don't know, that seems, you know, a little bit desperate at some level to, to get that daytime engagement up. But I think that's who they want to become now rather than everyone knows
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if you want to get daytime engagement. The Jerry Springer show is what we all used to watch when you're homesick from school and the price is right. So everyone knows.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
What about overseas though? Is that still growth opportunities for them?
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Felix Gillette
Yeah, and I think that's, you know, the, at some point, yeah, the US market becomes pretty saturated and you know, they stopped sharing their subscriber numbers so we have to rely on the third estimates. But yeah, I think like the US market, there's not too much more to grow there. And so you have to look for opportunities overseas and they do selective, you know, the World Baseball Classic in Japan where they get out and they see these opportunities to get more people involved, I think they're going to bring back free trials in some markets. So yeah, I think you have to look at the global, you know, audiences around the world and that's where their opportunities are.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
We're talking with Eric Clark, of course, over at Acuvest. I want to bring into the conversation Geeta Ranganathan. She is Bloomberg Intelligence here, senior media analyst joining us from Princeton. Geeta, your reaction? The stock is down here a lot in the aftermarket. Do investors have it right in your view?
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Geeta Ranganathan
Yeah, I mean, you know, coming into this quarter, obviously a lot of cautiousness, you know, very, very muted sentiment, a pretty low bar. But I think investors were definitely kind of hoping for something, you know, at least with the guidance on the operating margin front. And we don't, we didn't necessarily see that. So this really kind of feeds into this whole bearish thesis and further spooks investors about what the direction is going to be going forward and how this company is going to reinvigorate growth. I mean, to be fair, Carol, we've seen this movie before multiple times and every time we've seen management kind of pivot and lay out new strategies. I think the one that really comes to mind was in four years ago, back in 2022, when we saw negative subscriber growth and then we saw them kind of lay out a plan with advertising and the password crackdown with paid sharing. I'm just not sure that this time they have such clear cut levers that would necessarily move the needle and really kind of calm and soothe investor fears.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
Yeah, it's interesting too. I was just looking at some stuff on the terminal. Netflix began testing free trials for people who have never subscribed in a number of markets around the world. Geeta, is that a sign of a little desperation or just so smart?
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Geeta Ranganathan
Maybe a little bit of both. But I think, you know, just kind of given, you know, the metrics that we're seeing right now, this whole concern around engagement, the fact that their revenue guidance for the third quarter came in lower than expected, the fact that they're not taking up their operating margin guidance, all of these again, kind of point to, maybe it's a little bit of desperation and you know, we've seen over the past few weeks concerns about, you know, the slowing engagement in Netflix kind of trying to experiment with different things, you know, maybe becoming an aggregator, having streaming bundles on their platform, integrating more live linear content and all of that basically shows that, yes, you know, maybe something is broken slightly within their system. You know, the model might be slightly broken and they have to do something to really kind of juice up, you know, the growth, the growth here.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
All right, we're going to hang out to gta. Eric, thank you so much. This was really fun. We really appreciate it. Always, always. Eric Clark, CIO of Acuvest Global Advisors, joining us from, from San Diego, staying with our gita Ranganathan. We want to bring into it this conversation. Ed Ludlow, too. He is of course host of Bloomberg Tech. He's out there on the west coast in San Francisco. Come on in on the conversation. When it comes to Netflix investors. Disappointed here.
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Bank of America Representative
Yeah, really disappointed in like, you know, this done such a good job of explaining not just the numbers of the quarter gone and the outlook, but like history of where Netflix went and where it got to. I see three things, right? Like, what's the story here? Netflix is trying to convince the market that there is like this second act beyond us being focused on subscriber growth. And it's like three buckets. One, become a broader entertainment platform. So not just TV and movies, live sports, video, podcasts, YouTube creators, etc. Games. But the whole point is like, Netflix is still something you watch in the evening. What about during the rest of the day? And like reading through the letter and Lucas is write up and reporting is so clear. Second budget is guys use AI to expand margins. Netflix isn't the first to say that. And then they seem to be really trying to say, hey, we're building out a real advertising business here. If I was to sum up, what's the story? It's those three things in a bucket together.
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Felix Gillette
Yeah. And I completely agree with you there. And one point of that, I guess, tied all together. I want to throw it over to geetha, which is YouTube. I mean, what Ed is describing minus sort of the AI and original content is YouTube. And for, for years, Netflix has talked about YouTube being a competitor. But what do people watch when they're not watching Netflix? And they're on their phones, they're on Instagram, they're on TikTok and Geetha, they're on YouTube.
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Geeta Ranganathan
Yeah. And that's exactly what the Nielsen Gage report is telling us, you know, month after month. So we've seen YouTube numbers, the share of TV viewing times stay pretty constant, Tim, at about 13 to 14%. Meanwhile, Netflix numbers are the ones that are going down. And yeah, you can talk about, you know, how maybe the war and maybe, you know, the World cup and the Olympics are all kind of eating into Netflix's share of viewing time. But then that's the same story that holds good for YouTube as well. And we haven't seen those numbers really move. So I think this is what really, really worries investors. Because if you have a glut of AI generated content on YouTube, where will those Netflix numbers land? And I think that's the real big worry.
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Tim (Bloomberg Host)
Yeah. So is that what it means? Gita, and first to you, when they say the entertainment in their, in their letter, their investor letter, the entertainment industry remains dynamic and competitive. I mean, there is so much, Ed, come on in. I mean, coming at all of us in terms of choices and how we spend our time. And for some of us, increasingly, you know, maybe we're putting our phones down and we're actually going outside and doing stuff. Yeah.
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Bank of America Representative
And you know, they go on to say in that reference to the industry, meaning dynamic, we plan to stay ahead by leveraging technology to improve the service, improving monetization. I think that's the ad side of it. And delivering more entertainment value. It's been so interesting. Like, you know, I just reflect, you know, earnings is always great to get into the numbers. It's good to give size and scope. I really hope the Gita will tell us about, you know, the margins and the buybacks and their cash flow because like for ages, Netflix would say judge us on traditional financial metrics. Some of those are really good. You know, it's hard to say. You know, the reaction is serious. In the after hours, just from the World cup, right there was a podcast that I've been listening to for a long time. The rest is football. It was on Spotify. I listened to it as an audio only podcast. Football, meaning soccer. Absolutely loved it. Hosted by Gary Lineker. For the World cup, they committed to putting it live and in video daily on Netflix. That was a really interesting product to kind of track the arc of over the course of the World Cup. But like, I didn't tune into it live. I just like at the end of the day listen to it or watched it as a podcast when I had free time. So, you know, Netflix is trying to do something really difficult, change consumer behavior a little bit as it relates to them.
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