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The Netflix Middle-Finger Quarter

After a yearlong humbling on Wall Street, Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos’ victory-lap earnings call was both offensive and defensive—an F-U to the haters who cast doubt on the company’s ability to remain disruptive. Some arguments landed more solidly than others.

Netflix co-C.E.O.s Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos.
Netflix co-C.E.O.s Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos. Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Matthew Belloni
October 21, 2022

Did you watch that Netflix earnings call on Tuesday? You’d think co-C.E.O.s Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos had slayed the villain, won the regatta, kissed the girl—or whatever happens at the end of their Russo brothers movies. (I never finish them.) Ostensibly a sober quarterly financial update, this was a full-on victory lap, complete with overly optimistic declarations—“Well, thank God we’re done with shrinking quarters,” announced a grinning Hastings, apparently able to see the future—and a shareholder letter filled with attacks on the company’s rivals, both implicit and explicit.