Netflix (NFLX) FY2025 results: revenue $45.2 billion, up 15.9% on the year

Netflix is an entertainment service offering television series, films, games and live programming across a wide variety of genres and languages, with members able to play, pause and resume as much as they want and change plans at any time. It operates as one operating segment, and what it takes in comes mainly from monthly membership fees for streaming. Its stated core strategy is to grow the business globally within the parameters of its operating margin target, improving the member experience with content that attracts new members, offering a range of pricing plans including an ad-supported subscription, driving conversation around its content and improving the user interface so members can more easily choose what to watch.

Competition

The market for entertainment video is described as intensely competitive and subject to rapid change. The company competes for consumers' leisure time with other entertainment video providers, including linear television, other streaming services and those distributing pirated content, video gaming providers and open content platforms carrying user-generated and professionally produced work, and more broadly with other sources of entertainment such as social media. It also competes with entertainment video providers and content producers for content itself, both licensed and original projects. It notes that consumers may keep simultaneous relationships with several entertainment sources, and frames its aim as winning what it calls moments of truth by continually improving both its technology and its content.

Content rights and property

The company treats its trademarks, service marks, copyrights, patents, domain names, trade dress, trade secrets and proprietary technologies as important to its success, protecting them through patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret law and confidentiality agreements. Those rights extend to its technology, its business processes, the content it produces and distributes, and the consumer products and experiences built on that content, and it uses third-party intellectual property in creating some content, merchandising products and marketing the service. Its ability to give members something to watch depends on studios, content providers and other rights holders licensing rights to that content, including distribution rights and related elements such as the public performance of music inside it, and the licence periods and terms vary. It states that its ability to protect and enforce its own rights carries risk, that it encounters disputes over intellectual property from time to time, and that it cannot give assurance of prevailing in them.

Regulation

Media has historically been heavily regulated in many countries, and the company reports that legacy frameworks are being updated and expanded to cover services like its own. Several countries have widened cultural support legislation to include it, bringing investment obligations, levies and content catalogue quotas, and some restrict how far it can own rights in its service and its content. In certain countries regulators are also considering restrictions that would require formal reviews of, or adjustments to, the content appearing on the service there. The company states that these rules affect all services and may make operating in certain jurisdictions more costly or more restrictive in what it can offer.

Regions and people

Streaming is reported across four regions: the United States and Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific. In 2025 total streaming revenues rose 16% on the prior year, which the company attributes to growth in memberships, price increases and higher advertising revenue, partly offset by unfavourable foreign exchange net of hedging. By region the increase was 15% in the United States and Canada, 17% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 11% in Latin America and 21% in Asia-Pacific. At 31 December 2025 the company had approximately 16,000 full-time employees, approximately 10,900 of them in the United States and Canada, 2,500 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 1,900 in Asia-Pacific and 700 in Latin America, alongside employees engaged in content production, some part-time or temporary, whose numbers move through the year and who may be covered by collective bargaining agreements. It aims generally to pay employees at their personal top of market, lets them choose between cash and stock options, and runs pay equity analyses at least annually.

From Netflix's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 23 January 2026: read the full 10-K.