Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings left his position as executive director on Thursday shortly before the company announced the results of the last quarter of 2022, which closed with earnings of US$4.491 million.
Hastings stepped down as CEO of the streaming giant but will continue to serve as the company’s CEO.
Current co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos will remain in the role and will be joined by Greg Peters, until now COO, also as co-CEO.
The reasons for Hastings’ departure are unknown, although the company said in its letter that it had “completed” its “succession” process.
Hastings co-founded Netflix in 1997. In 2020, Sarandos was named co-CEO with him, while Peters was named COO.
The announcement of his departure comes after the platform added US$55 million and almost 7.6 million new clients in the last three months of the year, which closed with 230.7 million subscribers and a profit of US$4,491 million for the year as a whole. .
After the publication of the results, the value of the shares of the company based in Los Gatos (California, USA) fell 3.23% in operations after the closing of the New York parquets.
In a letter to investors, the company reported that in 2022 it generated US$31.615 million in revenue.
“2022 was a tough year, with a rocky start but a brighter finish. We believe we have a clear path to reaccelerate our revenue growth: continue to improve all aspects of Netflix, launch paid sharing, and build an ad offering,” the letter states.
The new plan with ads, key to the growth of Netflix
These results are announced after Netflix began offering a new plan to its customers at the end of 2022, at a reduced price but with ads, which led to the incorporation of almost 7.6 million new users, well above the 4.5 million that the company had planned from October to December.
This model, which debuted in December in 12 international markets at a cost of about US$7, has consolidated Netflix’s efforts to attract new subscribers after losing up to one million subscribers in the second quarter of the year.
In fact, at the beginning of November 2022, when it launched the new service, Netflix registered the highest rate of daily subscriptions in the US with an increase of 58% compared to the three days prior to the launch, in which it was the highest growth rate since the pandemic began.
In the coming months, the company will try to definitively implement an update to its subscription plans in which users who share accounts illegally have to pay an extra cost.
The system has already been put to the test in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru through an application that allows users to transfer the profile from a common account to an individual one, maintaining the viewing history and recommendations.
With more than 230.7 million subscribers, Netflix is the leading streaming service in the world, followed by Disney with 220 million across all its platforms: Disney+, Hulu, Star, and ESPN+.