Netflix Tops Expectations and Goes All-Cash to Lock Down WBD
NetflixNFLX is accelerating toward the Warner Bros. DiscoveryWBD finish line with cash in hand. The streaming company dropped its stock-and-cash structure for a $27.75 per share all-cash offer. The change came alongside Q4 results, with Co-CEO Ted Sarandos saying the move adds deal certainty as WBD prepares to spin off its cable networks into a new unit called Discovery Global.
- Netflix’s Q4 revenue climbed 18% year-over-year to $12.1B, while operating income jumped 30% — both beating internal forecasts.
- Paid memberships topped 325M during the quarter, and for full-year 2025, ad revenue more than doubled, rising over 2.5x to surpass $1.5B.
Content firepower loading: The all-cash pivot comes with the stock down 30% from its peak, as Paramount SkydancePSKY ramps up hostile pressure to buy all of WBD, including CNN and TNT. Netflix is also bulking up its pipeline with a Bloomberg-reported ~$7B deal for global streaming rights to Sony theatrical films through 2032 — thefirst worldwide pay-1 release deal as regional rights roll off by 2029. For 2026, Netflix guided to $50.7B–$51.7B in revenue and a 31.5% operating margin, while pausing buybacks to stockpile cash for the WBD acquisition.