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At Nasdaq's Wednesday finish, NFLX stood at $65.04 after a 5.3% decline. That was its lowest closing price since August 2024. Netflix reported third-quarter earnings per share of $0.87, ahead of the $0.82 consensus, while revenue reached $12.87 billion, in line with expectations.
The outlook drove the reaction. Netflix now forecasts about $2.7 billion in advertising revenue for 2026, against roughly $3 billion previously, and put fourth-quarter revenue at $13.44 billion.
Analysts had expected $13.51 billion. Shares also traded as low as $64.10, setting a new 52-week low.
Forecast cuts overshadowed quarterly results
The technical analysis accompanying the report identifies $65.11 as a former floor, as well as a rising trend line that began at the 2022 low. Wednesday's close was below both. Netflix is now 51% beneath its June 2025 peak of $134.09 and under its 50-day EMA at $72.92 and 200-day EMA at $82.61.
That analysis places the next levels at $58.86, the August 2024 low, 9.5% below Wednesday's close; $54.41, the May 2024 low, 16.3% lower; and $48.36, the July 2023 high, 25.6% lower. Its most severe case is $16.09, the 2022 low, 75.3% below the close. A move to that level is not presented as the base case: Netflix was losing subscribers in 2022, while third-quarter 2026 revenue grew about 12% year on year.
Netflix has previously fallen about 77% from its November 2021 peak to its May 2022 low, including a 35% one-day slide after its first subscriber loss in a decade. At $16.09, the shares would be valued at about 4.2 times the $3.79 per share analysts expect in 2027, compared with about 17 times at Wednesday's close.
Investors face a near-term price test
Analyst responses have been mixed. Deutsche Bank's Bryan Kraft, who rates Netflix Buy with a $93 target, called the market reaction too harsh, as reported by TheWrap.
The lowest published targets after the report were $65 from Barclays, which cut its target from $70 and kept an Equal Weight rating, and Decisive Research, which reduced its year-end 2026 target by $5. The median target was $88.26, around 36% above Wednesday's close.
Most banks retained Buy ratings while lowering their targets: Bank of America moved to $90 from $105, Bernstein to $80 from $95, JPMorgan to $81 from $85, and Morgan Stanley to $77 from $80. Needham's Laura Martin moved to Hold from Buy and withdrew her $120 target.
She expects Peter Rice, appointed chief content officer in place of Bela Bajaria, to need about two years to address the roughly $20 billion content slate, with material write-offs before then. Martin also expects single-digit revenue growth in 2027 and sees YouTube gaining ground. Her comments and the wider set of analyst revisions were reported by Finance Magnates.
Advertising is a changed part of the outlook: a year earlier, Netflix had described its third-quarter ad sales as its best ever and expected more than a doubling in ad revenue. In February, Netflix also withdrew from its agreed $72 billion Warner Bros. Purchase after Paramount Skydance made a higher offer.
The technical break remains unconfirmed. A daily close above $65.11 would make Wednesday's move a false break, while a recovery past $70.45 would invalidate the bearish setup for now. Friday, October 23, is the next checkpoint; a weekly finish below $65.11 would strengthen the case for $58.86 as the next level.
Where this lands in the stack
The report describes a change in Netflix's earnings outlook and a sharp repricing of its shares, not a broker or trading-platform migration. For firms with NFLX exposure, the immediate operational questions are whether position and risk dashboards reflect the updated price, and whether alerts or limits are tied to levels that need review.
Teams should also check how quickly their market-data and exposure views surface a further move through $65.11 or towards the cited support levels. The story does not specify any change to trading hours, venue access, settlement, margin requirements or reporting. Those remain checks for operators to make against their own instruments and controls, rather than changes established by this report.
