Netflix Surges as Rivals Stumble

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 12, 6:40AM EDT

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Netflix Surges as Rivals Stumble — © hocus-focus / iStock Unreleased via Getty Images

Over the past year, Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX | NFLX Price Prediction) shares have increased by 86% while rivals have lost billions of dollars. The S&P 500 is 36% higher over the same period. The game may already be over in a race that includes at least half a dozen large players.

In its most recently reported quarter, Netflix revenue rose 12% to $8.8 billion. The company forecasts that the growth will be 13% in the current quarter to $9.2 billion. While operating margins slipped to 17% last quarter, they are expected to jump to 26% in this one. Part of the reason for the growth was its ad-supported service. (Check out Netflix Stock Price Prediction in 2030: Bull, Base and Bear Forecasts.)

Netflix said it had 260 million subscribers worldwide in the most recently reported quarter, up from 233 million in the same quarter the year before and 247 million in the immediately previous quarter.

Except for Amazon Prime Video, which is often bundled with the Prime service and includes special deals and free delivery, Netflix competitors have lost billions of dollars. Disney+ has yet to make money since it was launched in 2019. Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max service lost $400 million in the most recently reported quarter.

Several other services will never catch up to Netflix in terms of total subscribers. Paramount+ has 63 million, Hulu has 49 million, Peacock has 28 million, and Apple TV+ has 25 million.

Among the most important parts of Netflix’s success is that Americans typically only subscribe to a few streaming services. Forbes puts the figure at 2.8. Rivals have to try to catch Netflix in an already overcrowded industry.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.