While his company’s stock is still rising in after hours trading, and looks like it may top $400 a share on its latest quarterly earnings report, Reed Hastings doesn’t seem that excited.
On a video call with analysts following the company’s quarterly earnings disclosures, Hastings seemed cool, collected and confident, but not eager.
Netflix is growing, but in his mind, they still have a lot of work to do.
When asked about how he thinks Netflix will fare against a rumored Amazon set-top box, Hastings seemed non-plussed. For him, Netflix isn’t just competing against other streaming video services like Amazon. It’s also competing with other ways people can spend their leisure time at home, whether that’s watching television or surfing the web. Because of that focus, he thinks Netflix has a leg up on the competition.
“It’s because we compete so broadly that we haven’t seen any material effect as more direct competitors have risen and fallen in the last two or three years,” Hastings said.
When asked about whether Netflix expects to see a boost to its business from the launch of next-generation game consoles like the Xbox One, Hastings was fairly pessimistic about the short term effects of new consoles, because the people who are going to be buying the PS4 and Xbox One this holiday season are gaming fans who already have at least one console in their home. In order for consoles to have a really significant impact on Netflix’s business, game companies need to sell a lot more of them.
“So, it’s really a question of do those companies over time pioneer a model where instead of 60 or 80 million as a lifetime, they get to (200) or 300 million units through some combination of price and utility, and then it becomes expansive. But that’s a couple years down the road,” Hastings said.
Previously on GeekWire: Netflix posts $1.1B in revenue and tops 40 million subscribers: Stock soars as CEO Reed Hastings warns of ‘euphoria’
