Netflix Co-CEO Admits Growth Is Slowing as Stock Heads for Fifth Straight Weekly Decline

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the quiet part out loud this week. At Bloomberg's 2026 Screentime conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Sarandos told interviewer Lucas Shaw, "Overall, we're not growing as fast as I want us to, and we're working on making that move faster."

The numbers back him up. Netflix viewership grew just 2% over the first half of 2026, according to Sarandos's own comments reported by The Hollywood Reporter and Bloomberg. Viewing hours for the company's Top 10 original shows actually declined 4% over the same period, according to Stocktwits.

The stock has been bleeding for weeks

Netflix shares lost 14% in September, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence cited by The Motley Fool and Invezz. The stock is down about 25% year to date and was on track for a fifth straight week of declines as of early October, according to Invezz and Stocktwits.

Two Wall Street firms pulled their price targets down hard. Wells Fargo cut its rating from equal weight to underweight on September 18, slashing its price target from $80 to $57. That target implies roughly 16% more downside from the stock's last close, according to Stocktwits. Wells Fargo predicted a 21% decline in hours watched for Netflix's top 100 original shows in the back half of the year, which The Motley Fool called a potential "crisis" for the company if it holds up.

HSBC followed with its own downgrade, from buy to hold, pointing to Netflix losing viewer share to YouTube. Netflix's share of U.S. viewing time fell about one percentage point to 7.8%, according to The Motley Fool, while YouTube holds roughly 14.2% of U.S. TV viewing share, according to Invezz.

Netflix also had its worst Emmy showing in a decade last month, winning just 16 awards on 111 nominations and finishing behind both Apple TV and HBO Max, according to The Motley Fool.

Live sports: good for signups, bad for ROI

Sarandos pointed to live programming, including high-profile NFL games, as one lever to reignite growth. But he was candid that the math doesn't work yet. Netflix spends about 5% of its roughly $20 billion annual content budget on live programming, which generates only about 1% of total viewing, according to Bloomberg and The Hollywood Reporter.

"What live is especially good at, however, is generating a lot of signups," Sarandos said, adding that it also reduces subscriber cancellations and that "the advertisers really love it," according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Sarandos also walked back his initial framing mid-interview. "The business is great and growing fine," he said later, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Breitbart News flagged this as an attempt to "spin" the stock's slide after his initial admission.

No regrets on the Warner Bros. bid

Sarandos was asked whether he regrets Netflix's brief winning bid for Warner Bros. Discovery assets before David Ellison, backed by his father Oracle founder Larry Ellison, stepped in with a larger offer. "Nahhh," Sarandos said, according to both The Hollywood Reporter and Breitbart. "I think the plan was solid. We won the deal at some point, so we think we priced it right — at our scale. That was the top price point where I thought we could return value to our shareholders with that asset. Any more than that, I thought we'd be taking it into negative territory."

A judge gave final approval Wednesday to let the roughly $111 billion Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery merger proceed, according to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Sarandos downplayed any competitive threat from the combined company, telling Bloomberg: "It's looked on paper so far it's one and one. So I don't know if one and one is two, or one and one is one and a half, or one and one is three."

He also addressed reports that Netflix had courted HBO Max content chairman Casey Bloys, who is expected to take on a role overseeing both HBO Max and Paramount+ once the merger closes. "We had a very well-publicised lunch," Sarandos said, according to Variety, adding that Bloys is "a super talented guy" who will land "in a very good position wherever he does."

What's not proven yet

Wells Fargo's 21% decline forecast for Netflix's top 100 shows is a projection, not a reported result. Netflix has not confirmed that figure, and the company has yet to report third-quarter results. Those are scheduled for October 20, according to The Motley Fool, and will be the first hard data point testing whether Sarandos's admission reflects a temporary rough patch or a deeper shift in viewer behavior toward YouTube and rival streamers.

Invezz noted Netflix now trades around 18 times projected 2027 earnings, which some analysts argue has already priced in much of the bad news. Whether that turns out to be a buying opportunity or a value trap depends almost entirely on what Netflix's engagement numbers show in three weeks.