Netflix earnings on deck: Here's what to expect

Netflix is set to report earnings later this week, the stock up about 80% in the last year. Joining us now with a sneak preview into Netflix and all things media including the drama at Paramount is Rich Greenfield, the Co founder of Light Shed Partners. Rich, great to have you with us. I do want to start off this is actually a stock that you don’t directly cover but your firm does. Live Nation, which is seeing a pretty dramatic decline pre market on this report from the Wall Street Journal that the DOJ is preparing to sue Live Nation which is the owner of Ticketmaster. What are your thoughts? There some analysts out there who think that a a lawsuit will probably not materialize, particularly in an election year where the city administration wants to court younger voters. What do you, what do you think? Look, my, my partner Brandon Ross covers Live Nation. He’s been all over this issue. Actually our top 24 for 24 predictions for this year we had Live Nation being sued by the government. So this is assuming it happens. Melissa, this is certainly not a surprise. I will say, and I think you’ve seen this from many other cases that you and the Squawk team have debated over the last couple of years. This administration has a pretty spotty track record on actually winning lawsuits. So just because they sue doesn’t mean they win. And look, if they go after discrete business practices, I think the stock’s actually going up a lot. I think that would actually be good. It can sort of list the cloud that’s been over this stock. So I don’t look at this as a negative. I think the drop you’re seeing this morning, Brandon and myself would look at this as a meaningful opportunity to step in and take advantage of this dislocation. All right, let’s move on to Netflix, Rich. And I’m curious what you, what you are looking for specifically in this quarter. It seems almost like it’s Netflix’s world amongst the streamers and it’s everybody else’s to lose. I think you nailed it, Melissa. That’s the right way to think about it. I mean, I think what’s changed over the past 12 months? You talked about the stock performance, but what’s changed, right, is everyone is pulling back. You’re seeing reductions in spending. Everyone is trying to get to profitability. I’m not talking about Netflix, but all of the streaming competitors are realizing streaming’s really hard and their losses have piled up. I mean, you know, Peacock has lost 7 billion, Paramount plus 5 billion, Disney probably 8 or 9 billion. Like, these losses that have piled up over the last several years are enormous. And so as everyone pulls back, they’re cutting back on content spend. They’re cutting back on marketing. Netflix, just essentially holding their overall content spend flat is actually widening the gap. You’re so you’re seeing a lot of fresh content on Netflix far more so than what you’re seeing on competitors. And I think that’s what you’re going to see at Netflix this quarter is continued solid improvement in subscriber numbers and then really more and more of an advertising story. I think you’re going to see them talk more confidently about how their ad business is progressing. They’re gearing up for their second upfront presentation in May. And I just feel like there’s more and more momentum. You’ve now got Amazon’s entered the advertising business with Prime Video over the last couple of months. And I just think the CTV ad market for those top two players combined with what Google’s seeing with YouTube, like there’s just a lot of momentum there. And I think you’re going to hear a lot of that on the earnings call later this week.