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Netflix & Spill: Streamer Smashed To 2 Year Low After Forecast Misses Across The Board

It has been a brutal year for NFLX longs, who have seen their favorite stock slide in a straight line since last summer, erasing almost 50% from the July 2025 all time high of $134. And unfortunately for them, it appears this brutality isn't going to end any time soon after the company mangled its Q2 earnings moments ago, reporting mediocre earnings, but more importantly, projecting numbers that missed consensus estimates for both Q3 and and the full year.

First, looking at the historicals, we find results that just barely beat expectations, while US and Canada revenue outright missed.

• EPS 80c, barely beating the est 79c, and up from 72c y/y

• Revenue $12.56 billion, +13% y/y, barely beating the est $12.58 billion
  • US & Canada revenue $5.43 billion, +10% y/y, missing estimate $5.52 billion
  • EMEA revenue $4.03 billion, +14% y/y, matching estimate $4.03 billion
  • Latin America revenue $1.58 billion, +21% y/y, beating estimate $1.51 billion
  • APAC revenue $1.51 billion, +16% y/y, missing estimate $1.53 billion
     
• Operating income $4.19 billion, +11% y/y, beating estimate $4.13 billion
  • Operating margin 33.4% vs. 34.1% y/y, beating estimate 33%
     
• Cash flow from operations $1.74 billion, -28% y/y, missing estimate $2.93 billion
  • Free cash flow $1.53 billion, -33% y/y, badly missing estimate $2.72 billion... maybe they too are building a data center.

While historical were lously at best - it was the company's projections that spooked the market: the company projected revenue of $12.9 billion in the current quarter and earnings of 82 cents a share, both missing analysts’ expectations. And since most of Wall Street's attention had been on future performance, this was enough to send the stock plunging.

Q3 forecast

• Sees EPS 82c, missing the estimate 84c 
• Sees revenue $12.86 billion, missing estimate $13 billion
• Sees operating income $4.27 billion, missing estimate $4.36 billion
• Sees operating margin 33.2%, missing estimate 33.5%

Full year forecast 

• Sees revenue $51 billion to $51.4 billion, saw $50.7 billion to $51.7 billion, midpoint missing estimate $51.38 billion
• Sees revenue +13% to +14%, saw +12% to +14%
• Still sees operating margin 31.5%, missing estimate 31.7%
• Still sees free cash flow about $12.5 billion, missing estimate $13.09 billion

Commenting on the quarter, Netflix said it is "building out our ads business continues to be a top priority and we remain on track to deliver approximately $3 billion in ads revenue in 2026." While the collapse in free cash flow was surprising (and begs the question if NFLX is also building a data center), the company said it is continues to expect annual cash content spend to amortization ratio of ~1.1x.

Commenting on the latest price hike(s)- which now happen every quarter if not every month, the company said that "the results of our recent price changes are consistent with prior changes and our expectations." That bad, huh?

NFLX also said that it was "leveraging AI to provide a more personalized, immersive and interactive experience for members, enhance ads capabilities for brands, and improve the quality of our series and films."

Translation: crap content, now with even more slop.

As noted above, NFLX shares have plunged more than 40% over the last year, as the company’s pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery and subsequent financial results have caused investors to realize that the leader in streaming has lost momentum. While Netflix still has more subscribers and viewership than any other paid streaming service, engagement has fallen off a cliff as growth in sales and hours spent on the service has been slowing.

If that wasn't enough, Netflix endured a months-long drought of new hits in the first half of the year, during which many returning shows struggled to retain viewers in the new seasons. That dry spell ended with I Will Find You, an adaptation of a Harlan Coben novel, which was Netflix’s most-viewed new original series this year, and frankly, was at best a 4 out of 10. 

Netflix has announced a flurry of new details with popular social media personalities in recent weeks, including YouTube stars Alan Chikin Chow and Nick DiGiovanni, and even touted its use of generative artificial intelligence on about 300 shows.

In other words, it has tried everything and still people are turning off. 

The company sought to reassure restive investors by outlining a plan to sustain growth in the coming years. It is investing in new kinds of programming, such as live sports and video podcasts. Podcasts are attracting more viewers during the day and on mobile devices while live programming has helped attract a lot of customers relative to its actual share of viewing, the company said.

“We are increasingly leveraging these tools to deliver higher quality output more quickly and at a lower cost than traditional methods,” the company wrote in its letter to shareholders. Netflix has resumed offering free trials in select markets as a test.

The amount of time people spend on Netflix grew 2% in the first half of 2026, a slight improvement over a year ago. The company said that was good, especially given the competition from the World Cup and Winter Olympics, which aired on other networks. Netflix also said it will now release its What We Watched report on show viewership annually, rather than twice a year.

None of that however is helping as markets look at the continued decline in growth and wonder, when does it end? Clearly not today with the stock plunging to a fresh 21 month low...

.... and set up for the ultimate head and shoulders pattern.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/16/2026 - 16:44

The finger-pointing around England has spread to its players.

The Odyssey Hullabaloo

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Acclaimed British filmmaker Christopher Nolan's (The Dark Knight, Oppenheimer) newest film, The Odyssey, opens this week in the United States.

But controversy has already surrounded Nolan's adaptation of Homer's 2,700-year-old epic poem about Odysseus's 10-year struggle to return home after the Achaian victory in the decade-long Trojan War.

Some of the film's actresses have suggested that Nolan is offering a more feminist - and long-overdue - take on the ancient poem. Actress Lupita Nyong'o, in particular, has criticized Homer's purported sexism.

Perhaps her misreading of Homer stems from her admission that, despite receiving degrees from elite Hampshire College and Yale, the 42-year-old actress had never even read the Odyssey until she was cast in the minor dual roles of Helen and her sister Clytemnestra.

The Odyssey was composed orally sometime around 750-700 B.C., contemporaneously with the rise of the Greek city-state. Along with Homer's other epic, The Iliad, The Odyssey marks the inauguration of Western literature. Over the next three millennia, it came to be recognized as not only the earliest but also one of the most profound works of Western civilization.

Far from being sexist, Homer's Odyssey offers a timeless and diverse panorama of powerful, independent, and savvy women.

Take Penelope, the wife of Odysseus and queen of Ithaca. Unquestionably loyal to her missing husband, she outsmarts the bloodthirsty suitors who seek to force her into marriage and seize the kingdom through her steadfast courage and cunning.

She confounds them through a series of brilliant ruses, ultimately enabling her husband's revenge.

Far different, but equally independent and crafty, are the immortal sorceress Circe and the divine nymph Calypso, who both shelter, seduce, and eventually bond with Odysseus. Both ultimately release him to continue his tragic journey home. Together they serve as archetypes of unmarried women who choose to live magical lives on their own sexual, economic, and political terms.

Helen makes a cameo appearance in both the poem and the film. Her beauty is all-powerful and dangerously - even destructively - seductive. It prompts the Trojan boy toy Paris to kidnap her, win her over, and flee back to Troy, setting in motion the decade-long Greek expedition against Troy and the extraordinary effort to bring the beauty home to her cuckolded and vapid husband, King Menelaus of Sparta.

Without the help of the virgin goddess Athena - often regarded as the wisest, most stable, and most humane of the Olympian gods - Odysseus would never have reached home.

By the same token, among the kindest figures in the poem are Odysseus's loyal nurse, Eurycleia, Penelope's trusted confidante, and the young, innocent Phaeacian princess Nausicaa, who befriends Odysseus and ensures her parents' goodwill toward him, eventually securing his safe return to Ithaca.

The monstrous, man-destroying female Scylla and the Sirens are every bit as deadly, but far more astute than the cannibalistic and dimwitted Cyclops Polyphemus.

Far from being sexist, then, The Odyssey offers the earliest - and one of the finest - gallery of capable women in Western literature.

Controversy also arose from Nolan's casting of Kenyan-Mexican-American actress Lupita Nyong'o as a black Helen, contrary to the Spartan queen's ethnicity in Homer's poem.

Cultural appropriation is a heated but often inconsistently applied charge. (When white women wear dreadlocks, that is somehow deemed to be cultural appropriation; black women wearing blond wigs isn't?)

Yet there is a long history of directors using marquee actors to play characters of different races or ethnicities. British actor Laurence Olivier achieved fame by brilliantly playing Shakespeare's black Othello. Mexican-American and Irish Anthony Quinn portrayed a stunning Zorba the Greek. Burt Lancaster, Charles Bronson, and Audrey Hepburn all effectively portrayed Native American characters.

In the age of sophisticated makeup and costuming, great actors can believably play almost any role. Problems arise only when a literary or historical figure's race or gender is so central to the character that it permeates the entire narrative of the film, novel, or poem.

No white actor could play a believable Martin Luther King Jr. or Muhammad Ali. Nor could a black actor be believable as Abraham Lincoln. Nor could a woman realistically play James Bond - Ian Fleming's womanizing playboy and hypermasculine secret agent 007.

Now, in Nolan's defense, Helen is a minor figure in both the poem and the film version of the Odyssey. That she was white in the poem and black in the film does not undermine the adaptation of Homer's poem. But had Lupita Nyong'o perhaps played the key character of Penelope, then the glaring racial disparity might have introduced new and extraneous issues or distracted from the central narrative.

A final note.

The Odyssey is an embodiment of Hellenic culture - and still deeply revered in Greece as an iconic symbol of the ongoing national experience. Given the tradition of brilliant Greek actresses such as Irene Pappas or Melina Mercouri, Nolan might have employed at least one Greek actor or actress in an epic about the indomitable people of Greece.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/16/2026 - 16:20

Clotheshorses are going Trojan.  Greek chic is the wardrobe à la mode among fashionable fans of Christopher Nolan’s epic feature, “The Odyssey,” out Friday, inspiring gung-ho movie goers to hit theaters garbed in togas, armor and siren swag for first looks at the mythical masterwork.  And it’s a splashy sight to sea.  California movie buff, David Joshua Taylor,...