Netflix reports second-quarter 2026 earnings on Thursday, July 16, with a video interview for investors scheduled at 1:45 PM PST, according to Netflix Investor Relations. The release will include the company's customary Letter to Shareholders alongside the interview format Netflix has used in place of a traditional earnings call.

The print comes three months after a rocky Q1 report. On April 16, Netflix shares posted their sharpest single-day decline in six months after the company's second-quarter guidance missed analyst estimates, even as first-quarter revenue itself beat expectations Bloomberg. That same day, Reed Hastings stepped down from the company, a leadership change disclosed alongside the earnings release rather than pre-announced.

Netflix stock has not recovered the ground lost that day. Shares closed at $73.53 on July 14, well below the 52-week high of $99.79 and down 21.26% for the year to date Macrotrends. That drawdown puts the stock roughly 26% off its highs heading into a print that will be read closely for signs of whether the April guidance miss was a one-off or the start of a trend.

Management's own Q1 guidance calls for Q2 revenue of $12.57 billion, up 13.5% year-over-year, and EPS of $0.78, up 7.7% year-over-year Simply Wall St. Both figures are company guidance issued with the April release rather than independent sell-side consensus, and the comparison point matters: it was this same guidance framework that fell short of external expectations three months ago. Whether Thursday's actuals clear management's own bar, rather than a Street consensus figure, is the more relevant test given how the last quarter played out.

On subscribers, the Street is looking for total paid memberships of 344.6 million by the end of Q2, up from 341.5 million at the end of Q1 — net adds of roughly 3.1 million for the quarter The Hollywood Reporter. Netflix stopped disclosing quarterly subscriber-add guidance some time ago, so this figure is an analyst projection rather than a company target, and the actual print may or may not reconcile cleanly with it depending on how the company chooses to frame engagement metrics this cycle.

The subscriber question sits alongside two other threads analysts are watching into Thursday: the ad-tier's contribution to revenue mix, and engagement trends as a proxy for churn risk in a increasingly saturated streaming market. Netflix has leaned on the ad-supported tier as its primary growth lever since raising ad-tier penetration became a stated priority, and any commentary on ad revenue run-rate or advertiser demand will likely draw more scrutiny than the headline subscriber count itself.

The leadership dimension adds a layer that a straightforward earnings beat-or-miss framework doesn't capture. Hastings's departure was disclosed at the same moment the stock was already digesting disappointing guidance, and it is worth noting that markets have had a full quarter to process the succession question without a subsequent update from the company on interim structure or strategy continuity. Thursday's interview format — typically fielding questions from sell-side analysts on camera — gives management its first extended public forum since April to address both the operational miss and the governance change in the same sitting.

Valuation context matters here too. A stock down more than a fifth year-to-date and roughly a quarter off its 52-week high is pricing in some combination of slower growth, margin pressure, or multiple compression relative to where the market had Netflix positioned entering 2026. Whether Thursday's numbers close that gap or widen it will hinge less on whether revenue grows 13.5% — that's already guided — and more on forward commentary: full-year revenue framing, ad-tier monetization trajectory, and any explicit remarks on content spend discipline given the macro backdrop facing discretionary consumer subscriptions broadly.

None of this guidance is a forecast of what will actually print Thursday. It is what management said in April it expected, against a stock price that has already discounted a meaningful miss once this year. The gap between guided numbers and delivered numbers is the story to watch, not the guided numbers in isolation.