Netflix’s founder Reed Hastings on January 19 announced that he will be stepping down from his position as the co-Chief Executive Officer of the company. Greg Peters will step up from Chief Operating Officer to become the co-CEO alongside Ted Sarandos, the announcement read.
In a blog post, Mr. Hastings stated that the move “succession planning for many years”, and that going forward he will serve as the Executive Chairman. “I’ll be helping Greg and Ted, and, like any good Chairman, be a bridge from the board to our co-CEOs. I’ll also be spending more time on philanthropy, and remain very focused on Netflix stock doing well,” he added.
Mr. Hastings (62) had been Netflix’s CEO for more than 20 years after taking over the role from his friend and fellow company co-founder Marc Randolph in the late 1990s.
Mr. Hastings move comes in the midst of Netflix’s subscriber growth surging again, providing an early sign that its shift to include ads in a cheaper version of its video streaming service is helping to combat tougher competition and attract cost-conscious customers grappling with inflation.
In its letter to shareholders, the company announced that Netflix’s subscriber growth is surging again, providing an early sign that its shift to include ads in a cheaper version of its video streaming service is helping to combat tougher competition and attract cost-conscious customers grappling with inflation. The fourth quarter operating profit and membership growth, “exceeded our forecast”, it said adding that the streaming platform gained 7.7 million subscribers during the October-December period. Bolstered by its holiday-season uptick, Netflix now boasts nearly 231 million worldwide subscribers—more than any rival in an increasingly crowded field of video streaming competition that includes the likes of Amazon, Hulu, Google’s YouTube, Walt Disney Co. and Apple, the world’s richest company.
This stood in contrast to the company’s position early in the financial year, when it announced that Netflix had lost two lakh subscribers in the first quarter and expected to lose another two million subscribers in the second quarter. It had attributed the losses to geopolitical tensions in Ukraine, increasing competition and issues pertaining to household penetration referring to the consumption of content from a single account in a household and sharing outside the household.
Also read | Netflix: counting losses and subscribers
On its forecast for the upcoming financial year, Netflix said that its focus would remain on developing additional revenue streams “where membership is just one component of our growth (like advertising and paid sharing).”
“In addition, we expect to roll out paid sharing more broadly later in Q1’23,” Netflix said, adding that the company expects some cancel reaction in each market. “But as borrower households begin to activate their own standalone accounts and extra member accounts are added, we expect to see improved overall revenue, which is our goal with all plan and pricing changes.”
(With agency inputs)
