Netflix Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
July 19, 2023

Key Takeaways

  • Netflix executives warned that the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes have delayed original content production and may push a portion of this year’s content spend into 2024, though they hope to reach an equitable resolution soon.
  • The company has rolled out its paid password sharing feature in over 90% of revenue markets, reporting early positive impacts on both subscribers and revenue, with full benefits expected to phase in over several quarters as less engaged borrowers convert.
  • Netflix removed its Basic ad-free tier in the US, UK, and Canada, redirecting price-sensitive users to a new ad-supported plan or the Standard ad-free tier, a move projected to boost average revenue per member as viewers sort into higher-priced offerings.
  • The nascent advertising business saw nearly 100% quarter-over-quarter growth in ad-supported memberships and management reiterated a long-term goal of ads contributing at least 10% of revenue, while continuing to build ad-tech and measurement capabilities.
  • Netflix forecasts substantial free cash flow growth over the next few years, expecting content spend to normalize to a 1.1x cash spend-to-amortization ratio post-strikes, enabling measured reinvestment in content and ad technology as revenue accelerates.
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Earnings Conference Call
Netflix Q2 2023
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Spencer Wang
Spencer Wang
VP of Finance, Investor Relations and Corporate Development at Netflix

Hello, and welcome to the Netflix Q2 2023 earnings interview. I'm Spencer Wang, VP of Finance, IR, and Corporate Development. Joining me today are co-CEOs, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, and CFO, Spence Neumann. Our interviewer this quarter is Jessica Reif Ehrlich from Bank of America. As a reminder, we'll be making forward-looking statements, and actual results may vary. Jessica, I'll now turn over the call to you for your first question.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Thank you. Well, let's start with the topic du jour, the not one, but two strikes. Can you give us your views of how this affects your business on a practical basis? How far out does your original content take you, and how much of the content spend do you think gets pushed from 2023 into, you know, from this year into next year?

Ted Sarandos
Ted Sarandos
Co-CEO at Netflix

Thanks, Jessica. Good afternoon, and thanks for the questions. Let me start by making something absolutely clear. This strike is not an outcome that we wanted. We make deals all the time. We are constantly at the table negotiating, with writers, with directors, with actors, with producers, with everyone across the industry, and we very much hoped to reach an agreement by now. I also wanted to say, if I may, on a personal level, I was raised in a union household. My dad was a member of IBEW Local 640. He was a union electrician. I remember his local because that union was very much a part of our lives when I was growing up.

Ted Sarandos
Ted Sarandos
Co-CEO at Netflix

I also remember, on more than one occasion, my dad being out on strike, and I remember that because it takes an enormous toll on your family, financially and emotionally. You should know that nobody here, nobody within the AMPTP, and I'm sure nobody at SAG or nobody at the WGA, took any of this lightly. We've got a lot of work to do. There are a handful of complicated issues. We're super committed to getting to an agreement as soon as possible, one that's equitable, and one that enables the industry and everybody in it to move forward into the future.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

In terms of, like, content, how much original content do you have to run out? Like, at a certain point in time, you probably will.

Ted Sarandos
Ted Sarandos
Co-CEO at Netflix

Look, we've put some of our upcoming content in the letter. We've said in the last call, we produce heavily across all kinds of content: TV, film, unscripted, scripted, to local, domestic, English, non-English, all those things, and they're all true. It's besides the point. The real point is we need to get to this strike to a conclusion so that we can all move forward.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Absolutely. Let's move on to password sharing, which is something everyone on the call wants to hear about. Could you just give us a you know, kind of like state of the union? What, what progress have you made to date, and when will the rollout be complete?

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Jessica, we've worked really hard iteratively over, you know, many months, and really even over a year and a half, to find an approach that we thought was a good product experience for most consumers. That gave them the information that they needed to make clear decisions, that included features that they wanted. Think about, you know, transferring a profile and your viewing history to a new account. Easy ways to manage your devices and account access. Being able to purchase that extra membership for a loved one. We've done a good job at building those features, we think, but also in a way that balances those user considerations with making sure that Netflix was able to get reasonably paid when we delivered entertainment to someone.

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Of course, we could invest that into making the service better for everyone. As of today, we've now launched that experience in almost all the countries that we operate in, and we're seeing that it's working. We're positive in terms of both revenue and subscribers relative to pre-launch in all of our regions. I also think it's important to note that the business impacts of that product experience will roll in over several quarters. It's not an overnight kind of thing because, in part, the interventions are applied gradually, and in part because some borrowers won't immediately sign up for their own account, but will do so, you know, next month, or three months, or six months, or maybe even longer down the line, as we launch a title that they're particularly interested in.

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

We're live in the vast majority of countries, you know, over 90% of countries by revenue. We're gonna continue to iterate and execute that model.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Is there a way to think about segments of borrowers who have yet to convert? I mean, it feels like there's another wave coming or maybe several waves. You know, maybe college students who are home for the summer and, you know, will go back in August or September. You know, I don't know that mobile devices have been shut off yet. Anecdotally, many people who are not on mobile devices have said they haven't been cut off yet. So how can you help us think through that?

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

There's components of it that are essentially what you described, where, whether it's because there's behaviors or because how we've, you know, organized the product experience, how those roll out, they'll happen over time. We'll see those interventions broaden, you know, to more of those cohorts, over a period of time. That's one sort of component of phasing it out. The other component is that we see differential engagement across that borrower population. There are some borrowers who are using it, you know, the service every day, and those folks are very likely to, you know, transfer to their own accounts very soon. Some folks are less engaged, and it's gonna take us a little bit longer to convince them to move over with great, you know, stories, great TV shows, and films.

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Both of those effects, essentially, are what distribute the business impact from this product experience. That's why I would think about it as, you know, we're seeing effects right now, but we'll also see those effects, you know, over the next many quarters.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

... Can you provide any color on the results? Like, what % have converted to paying and on what plan? Like, you know, how many went to members versus subscribers? Your subscriber numbers were great this quarter, but there were also add-ons to households. So how can you help us think through, and what kind of, you know, did people change plans?

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Yeah, I would say generally what we see is these are well-qualified members. In other words, they are choosing plans and are engaging at rates, have retention characteristics that generally look like higher tenure members. That's good because they're well-qualified, you know, that retention is quite good in essence. That's a broad way to think about what those borrower cohorts are, and that's consistent also with the fact that we'll convert essentially those most engaged, most well-qualified borrowers first. That's a general way to think about it, and then beyond that, I won't comment on, you know, more specific numbers.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Well, maybe if you could help us think through, like in UCAN, how much of the ARM growth is a function of add-on members to existing accounts versus new subs signing up to higher priced plans? You know, it sounds like from the July letter, that ARM will accelerate in second half as you get further along in password sharings. Is that correct?

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Spence. Yeah, Spence, do you want to pick this one up?

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Yeah. Yeah, maybe just, broadly thinking about our kind of revenue in Q2 and going forward, Jessica, key is that we delivered revenue in line in Q2 with our expectations, and we're on track to accelerate that revenue in Q3 and further accelerating in Q4. That's really our primary objective around revenue acceleration, and we're set to deliver on it. If we step back on thinking about our revenue growth and components overall or within a given region, it's driven by a combination of pricing, volume, and new revenue streams, like ads. If we think about each one of those, we're now more than a year out from any price adjustments in our big revenue countries.

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

We largely paused them during paid sharing rollout, and so that's to be expected. For ads, that new revenue stream, we've expected a gradual revenue build, and so that's not expected to be a big contributor this year, so continues to be on target. Most of our revenue growth this year is from growth in volume through new paid memberships, and that's largely driven by our paid sharing rollout. It is our primary revenue accelerator in the year, and we expect that impact, as Greg said, to build over several quarters. That's what we're seeing in each of our regions and in UCAN.

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

UCAN has a little bit more benefit from ads per se, because it's a bigger advertising market, but still very small overall because it's still nascent to the business.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

There's another surprise that you had this in the last couple of weeks, which seems like it could also be a very positive driver to ARM, and that is that you dropped the basic plan in Canada several weeks ago, and you just announced that in the U.S. and U.K. I guess a couple of questions here. Are there any plans for the rest of the world? Has it so far, from your experience in Canada, has it driven the response that you hoped for? Is the response that you know, more people go to the advertising tier? I guess one other final part of this question is that it's an obvious positive for ARPU. I mean, it feels like the impact is like, $5 or more per month.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

You know, when this is fully rolled out over three years or so, you know, like, over what period of time do you think this will have the most impact?

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Sure. We think of this as a continuation of, you know, what we've generally done for a long period of time, which is think about, how do we optimize the plan structure, the pricing, the features that we have, with really two goals in mind. One goal is we want to give a, you know, consumers access across a wide range of price points so that more people around the world can enjoy the great stories that Bela's team is doing. That means the appropriate spread of prices and the appropriate corresponding features, including ads, no ads, video quality, number of simultaneous streams, and we'll seek to actually add to that list of features over a period of time. The second big goal that we've got, and think about this, is optimizing, you know, long-term revenue, and that includes a bunch of factors that you might expect.

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

It's sign-up conversion, it's plan take rate, engagement, retention. Just as we evolved from a single plan years ago, and have adjusted our offering over time, this latest move reflects what we think will best achieve those goals in the countries that we launched it in, U.S., U.K., and Canada. I think it's also important to note that from that perspective, accessibility and affordability, we think the entry prices that we have right now in those countries, so $6.99 in the United States, GBP 4.99 in the U.K., and CAD 5.99 in Canada, represent an amazing entertainment value, and those are attracting a healthy share of sign-ups.

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

In terms of the specific effects that you're talking about, it's pretty much what you would expect, which is, you know, when we drop that basic tier, folks that would have signed up for that tier essentially sort into two tiers. They either take the ads plan, which is that really low, attractive entry-level price, or they move into the standard plan. We see that, you know, that sorting. In terms of what we would expect, I mean, we are rolling this out in an iterative fashion across countries, and that allows us to understand the impacts and, you know, not be surprised. I think things are generally going as we expect in that regard.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

One last question, and then I'll move on to advertising. For your new members or new subs from the, from the password sharing, are there any noticeable differences in churn?

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Well, I would say, as I mentioned before, the way to think about these, or the way that we're seeing them in terms of the members that are signing up, borrowers that are spinning off right now, I would characterize them as well qualified. They're folks that have watched Netflix for a long period of time. They know how Netflix works, so they're behaving in terms of retention characteristics, churn characteristics, like more higher tenure subscribers, which is good. That means, you know, better retention.

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Jessica, maybe just, you know, a number of the questions you were asking is kind of getting at a little bit of a, I think you mentioned ARPU, and, you know, we call it ARM or Average Revenue per Membership. What are we kind of seeing in the numbers, and how does that play out with, as you think about the, you know, the move out of the basic ad-free tier, as you mentioned in Canada and a couple other countries as of today, and also as we build our ads? Maybe if I can just for a second talk that through, 'cause it can get a little complicated.

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

If you think about the drivers of average revenue per member, starting with the revenue drivers that we spoke about a moment ago, you can see our FX neutral ARM is, it was down 1% FX neutral in Q2, and we expect similar in Q3, flat to slightly down. That's mostly due to the limited price adjustments we mentioned over the past year in our, in our big revenue markets in advance of rolling out paid sharing. There's also some at play here, some movement in plan and country mix shift over time. Most of our member growth over the past year has been outside of U.S., so in lower ARM countries, so that plays into the ARM trends. Importantly, over time and over the medium to longer term, we expect ARM will benefit from price adjustments.

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

I mean, we haven't changed our long-term pricing philosophy, and it'll benefit from ads and the extra members that you mentioned. It's just that both of those are early. Only a small percentage of our members are on the ads tier, even with the moves we just mentioned. Nice growth in the ads tier, but still off a small base. We're really early in terms of paid sharing impacts, including extra member, for the reasons that Greg mentioned, that's gonna build up over multiple quarters. As they do, we'll see all of that demonstrating itself in growth and ARM over time, we would expect.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Moving on to advertising, could you give some color on some of the innovative or non-traditional offerings that you have? I mean, one of the things you talked about in the upfront was, like, offering advertisers, the ability to go into the Top 10, which is... It provides an incredible reach, a guaranteed reach, really, every, all the time. Just talk through some of the ways, 'cause you're thinking in ways that are very different from traditional media.

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Yeah. I think stepping back, it's useful to start with, we've got a lot of work to grow this business. The first priority that we're focused on is scale. We know that reach is one of the, you know, predominant considerations, the dominant considerations that advertisers have when they think about where to go to spend their dollars. We want to be in that top list. We grew ads, planned membership, almost 100% quarter-to-quarter, that's good growth, that's a good trajectory, as Spence mentioned. We want to continue that. That's job number one. Job number two is we've got a really solid list of advertiser-facing features that are not in that innovation category, that are really more following a well-trodden path. We're rolling those out. These are things like verification, they're measurement, they're targeting.

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

I'd actually include, in that bucket, building out our go-to-market and sales capabilities in every country so that we can serve more advertisers and serve them more effectively. There's a bunch of very straightforward work, these follow in this well-established path. We just need to do the work. We know we can do it, so it's heads down and execute. Then we get to, you know, a little bit what you're talking about, which is an opportunity over time, to really think about our offering, both in terms of unique capabilities that we can deliver that blend, you know, TV with properties of digital advertising, and also work at the interface of the user experience and the ads experiencing.

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

That really leverages the core capabilities that we've used for a long, long period of time of UX testing, iterative development, data-driven personalization to establish, over time, a leadership position in defining what is the premium ads experience on CTV. You can see glimpses of that right now. You mentioned Top 10. I think that that is a creative way to think about how we give advertisers a different way to have, essentially, a guaranteed participation in the most popular shows, most popular films at any given moment on Netflix. That's exciting, but there's just tons of work ahead of us, tons of opportunity, and we're really focused on continual improvement. We're also confident that all the fundamentals are there, and that we can build, over those several years, a material ads business.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Has there been any change to advertising ARM since last quarter, when you said advertising ARM was at least as high as the standard tier, indicating that advertising only, part of it was $8.50 or more?

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

I can take it if you want, Greg. It's no change. Our overall ads ARM continues to be higher than basic ad-free globally. Same as, you know, the statement on standard in terms of standard, with ads higher than standard ad-free in the U.S. Generally, we're just pleased with our per-member ad economics and continue to feel really good about the opportunity to grow the ads plan, the ads offering. Good for members, good for our business. As Greg said, we've just got a lot of work to do to get from here to where it can be, we believe, over time, which is a material additional incremental revenue and margin driver for the business.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Can you tell us about your initial upfront advertising performance? I mean, you seem to have everything advertisers are looking for, but this is a really tepid overall advertising environment. Is there anything you can say about what the reaction's been?

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Yeah, sure. It's, first of all, it's great to be able to have an opportunity to meet with so many advertisers in a concentrated period and hear what they need from us. That's helpful to synthesize, you know, what are our top, you know, requirements, and how can we better, you know, support those advertisers. I think you're absolutely right that the general market is soft. We're seeing that, you know, across multiple different companies. We benefit right now from being relatively small, so there's, you know, scarcity around our inventory. I think we're able to manage that process effectively, and we're seeing good demand and good progress on the upfronts within that sort of broader soft market.

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Our job really now is to add, as quickly as we can, you know, advertiser features that meet their needs so that we can make that, you know, our offering more attractive as we scale that inventory up.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

... What tools are and how much time do you need to, like, invest to build your own ad tech infrastructure?

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Well, I would say we're, you know, it's a gradual ramp. I, you know, if you're looking for a specific number, you know, we have, you know, tens of engineers working on this at this point in time. They're delivering features on a consistent basis. Microsoft has even more than that are delivering features on a consistent basis, and we're working in collaboration, essentially in a priority order when we see back to that, you know, what are our advertisers telling us they need? We're just sort of knocking these down one after another.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Is there, like, a time period, like, in order to achieve scale, is this, like, a three-year plan before you feel like you really have all the tech capabilities in place?

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Yeah, both scale in terms of reach and the tech capabilities in terms of features aren't sort of a binary condition. It's not like, you know, you don't have it one day and then you suddenly have it the next day. I would say we're just constantly, you know, iterating and walking up both of those, both of those hills. Scale, you know, I'm pretty impressed with, you know, being able to get to 100%, you know, quarter-to-quarter growth. That's a good trajectory, that, I feel that puts us on a good place and, you know, that'll be better and better every year, essentially.

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

The technical features, again, we've got a long list, and it's not as if one day we're magically done, but continued progress, you know, on what we're doing right now, allows us to sort of move from building the basics into that sort of innovative space that you mentioned before.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Spence, this one may be for you know, what's your vision for the advertising contribution? You've said in the past that you'd like it to be 10% of revenue, given the decline of linear, are you rethinking this so that it would be a higher percent?

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Well, you know, I think, you know, we've got a long way to go from where we are today to even getting to 10%, Jessica. We don't want to get ahead of our skis, if we will. We've got a lot of blocking and tackling to do. We believe it can be a meaningful part of our business. When we say 10%, it's in part because we wouldn't spend all this effort, time and energy, resource allocation-

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Right.

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Senior management focus of Greg and Ted and others, if we didn't think it could be at least 10% of revenue. I would say that's something that is a bar we're shooting for, hoping to meet or beat over time. And as you say, there's a lot of branded TV ad dollars that are, that we set our sights on over time because we think we're a great ecosystem and environment to collect that demand, but we have to prove it out over time. Not ready to kind of increase our long-term projections from one we haven't even really come close to getting to yet, Jessica. Give us a little time, I guess is what I would ask.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Sure, sure. Maybe to follow up on what you just said, like, where do you think the pool of ad dollars will come from over time? Given all of the capabilities that Greg just talked about, why would it be limited to linear? Because you're gonna have such extraordinary capabilities, like, shouldn't the pool be linear and digital?

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Yes, and it should be both. Well, I'll let Greg speak to it.

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Yeah. I think it's fair to say that over a period of time, we anticipate pulling both linear and digital dollars. Where we are today, we're much more targeted at that linear, brand-focused TV advertising, and that's a sweet spot that we can speak to right now. We're definitely building capabilities and have an aspiration to build capabilities that over time will allow us to expand that envelope. You know, again, Prize number one first is to go after that brand advertising. There's a lot of dollars there. There's a lot of dollars looking for great consumers to connect with, and we think we can provide that solution.

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Yeah, Jessica-

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

One last-

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

... There's really, over time, to be a better-than-TV model, and so it's, it starts with that, but it's blending the two together and capturing both, brand and digital dollars over time.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

One last question on this, and then we'll move on. Has engagement changed in the past quarter or so? Are there any noticeable differences between the tiers?

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

There's generally some differences across the tiers that you might expect. you know, more qualified, more engagement generally means, you know, as a broad, you know, statement, higher tier participation. We haven't seen a change over time, if that's specifically what you're getting to. We're seeing good engagement across all of our tiers, good engagements across our ads plan as well.

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Ted, if you, I don't know, cut you off.

Ted Sarandos
Ted Sarandos
Co-CEO at Netflix

Yeah, no, I think.

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Overall engagement trends.

Ted Sarandos
Ted Sarandos
Co-CEO at Netflix

Yeah, no, I mean, the thing to keep in mind is that, you know, as streaming continues to grow, so 37% of TV time now in the U.S., and then we continue to grow our share of streaming in that growing space, even though it's very, very competitive. Probably best evidence is for nearly every week of this year, we've had the number one show and the number one film on streaming, which is, you know. That creates an enormous amount of, to your point, Jessica, of possibilities, but all dependent on building those capabilities. As we put those things together, there's an enormous opportunity as eyeballs increasingly move to streaming. Oh, by the way, they're moving to streaming because this is where the consumers' demand is running.

Ted Sarandos
Ted Sarandos
Co-CEO at Netflix

This isn't like we've invented something and we're dragging them in. Basically, the consumers are long away from this notion of the linear grid dictating what they can watch and where they can watch and how they can watch it. The demand is on us to deliver on streaming and high-quality content that they love. Our ability to monetize it, both through pure subscription and through advertising, if they choose to do so, is really dependent on us having the content that they're excited about, day in and day out, week in and week out, and in every country in the world.

Greg Peters
Greg Peters
Co-CEO at Netflix

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. The foundation of our attractiveness to advertisers is ultimately our reach, this high level of engagement, and amazing titles, TV shows, and films like Ted mentioned, in the Top 10, that they want to have their brands next to.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Let's move on to free cash flow. You had an extraordinary quarter, this second quarter, and you said, you know, you talked about the outlook for Q3. Could you maybe address the underlying dynamics, talk a little bit about content spend and other investments?

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Yeah, sure, I can take that one, Jessica. I mean, what you see in our cash flow forecast, we took it up for 2023 in terms of our expectation. It's really driven by a few things. One, just higher certainty in our forecast with the success of the early success of the paid sharing rollout. We also had some move in production timing, just the typical ins and outs of the schedule, and then lastly, the impact of the strikes. There's still a pretty wide range of outcomes for where we're gonna ultimately land on cash flow this year, given the ongoing strikes, but. That may also create some lumpiness, actually, between 2023 and 2024.

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Still with substantial expected free cash flow in 2024, but some lumpiness between the years. More broadly, you know, we're past that most cash-intensive phase of building out our original programming strategy. We'll have some near-term lumpiness, but if we apply a multi-year lens, we expect a positive and growing free cash flow trajectory in the years ahead. That's generally what you're seeing, and of course, as part of that, just ongoing prudent expense management, still growing our expenses, but trying to grow slower than revenue in a responsible way that helps us scale healthy.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

What's the content spend outlook for the next few years? What is normal post the strikes, plural?

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Well, what you've seen is, and what we talked about when our revenue had slowed down in early 2022, is that we would keep our content, our cash content spend roughly flat. That's what we've been doing, between from 2022 through with the plan through 2024, with the lumpiness that we talked about. Some of it because of the kind of coming out of the throes of COVID, as we talked about in the last couple calls, and now most recently because of the Strikes. Our hope and our expectation is we get back up to those levels, similar levels in 2024 as we were in 2022. That, so we will grow next year is our hope and expectation back to those levels. We talked about it in the letter, too.

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

What that works out to is roughly about a 1.1 ratio in terms of our cash content spend relative to our content expense. So that allows us to kind of scale in a healthy way while also kind of growing our cash flow over time. As we prove out revenue acceleration, which we expect to do as we've guided to start in Q3 and then further in Q4, we hope to start ticking up our cash spend on content again and doing it in a healthy way. We have to prove that out, obviously, but we've got a lot of great entertainment that we hope to provide to members all around the world, as Ted said.

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

We think we've got a lot more we can spend into that big opportunity, but we want to do it responsibly.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

With your content spend, very measured, let's put it that way, and you're kind of a maybe investing in tech, ad tech capabilities, but beyond that, like, it feels like there's tremendous leverage in your business model. Is there a way, like, to think about growth and free cash flow beyond 24?

Spencer Wang
Spencer Wang
VP of Finance, Investor Relations and Corporate Development at Netflix

I can take that, Spence.

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Yeah, go for it.

Spencer Wang
Spencer Wang
VP of Finance, Investor Relations and Corporate Development at Netflix

I would say, Jessica, the best way to think about it is we expect to grow revenue and profits over time. As Spence mentioned, we are past the most cash-intensive phase, so that cash content cash spend to content amortization ratio that we've talked a lot about in the past, we think is gonna be roughly in the neighborhood of 1.1x in 2024, probably somewhere around that area for the foreseeable future, based on the current plans. I think that gives you a right sort of building blocks to be able to get a rough sense of it. I think what you would see is that would lead to, you know, very healthy free cash flow generation for the foreseeable future.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Can we talk about uses of free cash flow and maybe possibly M&A? I mean, there are a lot of distressed assets in media land, maybe the lowest multiples in memory that we've seen. What assets might be interesting to you?

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Spencer, you want to keep going?

Spencer Wang
Spencer Wang
VP of Finance, Investor Relations and Corporate Development at Netflix

Well, we just said we've got. You know, we've always looked at these things in terms of the opportunity of IP, for IP, versus those assets. Some of those assets are stressed for a reason. We're mostly looking at, we would look into our M&A activity would be mostly around IP that we can develop into great content for our members, which is our real strength in the business. That's, I would think that we have traditionally been very strong builders over buyers, and that really hasn't fundamentally changed. If there are opportunities that give us access to pools of IP that we could develop into and against, that could be super interesting.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Just maybe moving sort of a little bit away from that, but you've developed a library over 10+ years at this point, and it's pretty substantial, and you've got some amazing, I mean, really amazing global titles. Would you consider selling your library content to others?

Spencer Neumann
Spencer Neumann
CFO at Netflix

Look, we've always have found that, you know, we offer this content to our members in a unbelievable value on Netflix as it now. Almost anywhere else we put it, there's either a crossover and they otherwise have a Netflix account, or of a much smaller viewing base. We're, we think we're taking the right course in terms of offering the content to our members and having it around, even after its original run on Netflix. The, the syndication market, the home video markets that continue to exist today are kind of contracting in a way, that isn't too exciting to build up against, versus this opportunity we have with,

Ted Sarandos
Ted Sarandos
Co-CEO at Netflix

... Please our members and thrill our members with our content, all the way back through the history of our content. The opportunity, we've also seen things like, you know, when Extraction 2 just did so well for us this past quarter, Extraction 1 was popped right back up into the Top 10. We've seen that a lot with new seasons of shows, like when Queen Charlotte hit into the Top 10, here comes Bridgerton 1 and 2. It's a really, it's a very fluid and dynamic offering in that way, and it's even better the deeper and richer that library becomes.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Are you-

Spencer Wang
Spencer Wang
VP of Finance, Investor Relations and Corporate Development at Netflix

Jessica, we have time for probably one last question.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

I, oh, my God. Okay.

Spencer Wang
Spencer Wang
VP of Finance, Investor Relations and Corporate Development at Netflix

You can make it two parts if you want, Jessica.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

Two, okay. Well, can you talk a little bit about your live strategy, including sports experimentation?

Ted Sarandos
Ted Sarandos
Co-CEO at Netflix

Sure.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America

I mean, there seems to be a lot going on in sports. I mean, you supposedly outbid or reportedly outbid ESPN for an NFL sports documentary. Maybe if you could include in live sports, that would be great?

Ted Sarandos
Ted Sarandos
Co-CEO at Netflix

It's our position in live sports remains unchanged. We're super excited about the success of our sports-adjacent programming. We just launched a great one called Quarterbacks with the NFL. A few months, few weeks ago, we had Tour de France, which did exactly what we saw with Drive to Survive, which is introduce a brand-new audience to a sport that's been around for a really long time and not very well understood. You do that through exceptional storytelling, not through the liveness of the game. We're able, by doing that, we can now offer this wide variety of sports programming for sports fans that's in season year-round, it really leans on our strengths, which are storytelling. We're really excited about that.

Ted Sarandos
Ted Sarandos
Co-CEO at Netflix

You have read some of the experimental stuff that we're gonna be doing, like, you know, this live golf match in November. We're excited about that because it serves as a promotional vehicle for our sports brands, like Full Swing and Drive to Survive. We really think that we can have a really strong offering for sports fans on Netflix without having to be part of the difficulty of the economic model of live sports licensing.

Spencer Wang
Spencer Wang
VP of Finance, Investor Relations and Corporate Development at Netflix

Great. Well, thank you, Ted, for that answer. Thank you, Jessica, for your questions. Thanks to the audience for tuning in to the video interview. We look forward to speaking to you all next quarter. Thank you.

Ted Sarandos
Ted Sarandos
Co-CEO at Netflix

Thanks.

Executives
    • Greg Peters
      Greg Peters
      Co-CEO
    • Spencer Neumann
      Spencer Neumann
      CFO
    • Spencer Wang
      Spencer Wang
      VP of Finance, Investor Relations and Corporate Development
    • Ted Sarandos
      Ted Sarandos
      Co-CEO
Analysts
    • Jessica Reif Ehrlich
      Senior Media and Entertainment Analyst at Bank of America
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