Netflix will report earnings Tuesday with its stock down 26% this year

Netflix $NFLX is set to report third-quarter results after the market close on Tuesday, and its shares have lost 26% in 2026, wiping out over $135 billion of its valuation. Netflix stock fell 14% in September.

Investors want to know how the company intends to keep growing amid mounting competition, according to Reuters. Netflix Co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos said the company "is not growing as fast as I want us to," according to Reuters.

Netflix announced Monday that film division head Dan Lin is leaving. Last week, it replaced Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria with Peter Rice, the former chairman of Walt Disney $DIS Television, according to Bloomberg.

Investors are likely to focus on what executives say about content planned for the next six months more than on the quarterly numbers, according to Bloomberg. The stock is heading toward its poorest annual showing since 2022 and is one of the 10 biggest laggards in the Nasdaq $NDAQ 100.

Analysts expect third-quarter revenue to rise 12% to $12.9 billion and earnings to climb 39% to 82 cents a share, according to Bloomberg. That would be Netflix's most sluggish pace of sales expansion for a July-to-September period in three years, according to Reuters.

Reuters cited several engagement measures. Apptopia data show that U.S. subscriber cancellations climbed 16.6% from a year earlier in the third quarter, twice the rate of the previous three quarters, while U.S. and Canadian downloads dropped 20%. Jefferies estimates that members watched an average of 49 hours a month during the opening six months of 2026, compared with 66 hours a month over the same stretch of 2023. Analysts pointed to the 2026 FIFA World Cup and a content lineup that was weaker than last year's as factors that dragged on engagement, according to Reuters.

Netflix is eliminating 6% of its global workforce, or around 1,000 jobs, in its deepest staffing reductions since 2022. Co-Chief Executive Greg Peters and Sarandos told employees on Oct. 14 that the cuts would fall most heavily on product, tech, legal and human resources teams. They said the company remains on track to meet its full-year earnings forecast.

In July, Netflix reported that members watched more than 97 billion hours of content in the first half of 2026, up 2% from a year earlier. It also said it would shift viewership reports from twice a year to once a year beginning in 2027. Netflix stock fell more than 8% in after-hours trading following those results.