Great Quarter, Streamers – The Irrelevant Investor

Technology has transformed so many areas of our lives over the years that it’s easy to forget how good we now have it and how bad everything once was by comparison.

Netflix is one of the most disruptive companies on planet Earth, having turned its industry upside down and inside out. While there might be some nostalgia for the era of must-see appointment TV, I don’t think anyone can say with a straight face that the viewing consumer was better served back then than today. I’m not saying we’ve reached perfection. You could argue that we’re drowning in content. But all things considered, the whole experience is much better than it was before.

Some people might view Netflix today as the incumbents, the winners of the streaming war. But it wasn’t too long ago that their future was very much in question. “They’re spending $7 billion in content! How much money are they losing? How much debt do they have? What about original programming?” Anyone who’s been around for more than a minute remembers all of these arguments. Netflix turned all of these into dust as they grew from infancy to the now 800-pound gorilla in the room.

The line between Netflix and television is rapidly disintegrating. For the tens of millions of cord-cutters, there is no distinction between the two. In March, 8.1% of all eyeballs hitting the box on your wall were done on Netflix.

When Netflix, a stock I own, reported its results a couple of weeks ago, it fell 9%, its worst day since the debacle quarter in early 2022, when it blew up after losing subscribers. But after the market had a chance to digest and reassess, it decided that that 9% drop was an overreaction. It took just fourteen days to regain all of those losses.

This is one of the things I’m most excited about with our new show we’re doing called “Great Quarter Guys.” It’s the antithesis of a First Take-style reaction. We’re not rushing to show you the market’s knee-jerk move. We’re bringing on some of the smartest people in the world to give you sober, thoughtful analysis.

We brought Julia Alexander from Puck and Parrot Analytics on to discuss what’s happening inside of Netflix, Warner Brothers Discovery, Paramount, and Disney. I first heard Julia on Derek Thompson’s Plain English last year and have followed her ever since. She’s one of the best in the business at covering all the streaming companies. You can see all of the slides we used on the call by clicking here.