Netflix Q3 2026 Earnings on October 20: What the Stock Did After Each of Its Last 39 Reports

Netflix reports third-quarter 2026 results on Tuesday, October 20, after the market closes. The numbers go up on its investor relations site at about 1:01 PM Pacific (4:01 PM Eastern), and the usual video interview with the co-CEOs and CFO follows at 1:45 PM Pacific, per the company's announcement. The stock goes into the report at $70.30, its October 9 close, down 25% for the year and 43% below the record close it set on October 21, 2025, the afternoon before its last October report.

Everyone writing about this report will tell you what to watch. We wanted a number nobody else had, so we measured what Netflix stock actually did the day after every one of its quarterly reports since January 2017, 39 of them, using the report dates from Netflix's own 8-K filings with the SEC and daily closes from Yahoo Finance, adjusted for the 10-for-1 split in November 2025. The short version: the median move is 7.3% in one direction or the other, the stock has fallen after 24 of the 39, and the last four reports were all down days. The detail below matters more than the summary, especially the part about what happens in the month after a big drop.

The 39-report record

Netflix reports after the close, so the reaction shows up the next trading day. We took the close on report day against the close the following day. Across the 39 reports:

• Median size of the move: 7.3%, up or down. The average is 8.0%. Twenty-five of the 39 moves were 5% or larger, and ten were 10% or larger.
• Direction: down 24 times, up 15. Netflix has been a stock that disappoints more often than it delights on report day, at least since 2017.
• Biggest drop: April 2022, down 35.1%, the quarter Netflix reported its first subscriber loss in a decade. The next worst was January 2022, down 21.8%. Biggest gain: January 2021, up 16.9%, with October 2023 close behind at 16.1%.
• The gap usually grows during the day. The median opening gap was 6.7%. In 25 of 39 cases the full-day move ended larger than the opening gap, so buying or selling the open to fade the reaction has, more often than not, meant standing in front of a move that was still going.

The last four reports: down, down, down, down

October 21, 2025: down 10.1% the next day. Netflix missed on earnings because of a tax charge tied to a dispute in Brazil, and the stock never recovered that ground.

January 20, 2026: down 2.2%, the mildest of the four, with the stock opening 5.4% lower and clawing half of it back.

April 16, 2026: down 9.7%, with the stock opening 10.6% lower and never making it back to flat.

July 16, 2026: down 7.3% close to close. The stock opened 11.9% lower at $65.48 and finished at $68.95, so the open was the worst print of the day. The second-quarter numbers came in slightly ahead of expectations, and the stock fell anyway because the third-quarter revenue forecast implied growth slowing to about 12%.

That is the pattern that matters for October 20. On three of the last four report days, the headline numbers were fine and the stock fell on the forecast for the next quarter. Netflix's own letter sets the bar it is graded against, and the grade comes from the quarter after the one being reported.

What Netflix told you to expect

Netflix publishes its forecast in the shareholder letter each quarter, so there is no mystery about the targets. For the third quarter, the July 16 letter forecast revenue of $12.86 billion, an operating margin of 33.2% and diluted earnings per share of $0.82, with growth coming from memberships, pricing and advertising. The second quarter came in at $12.56 billion in revenue, a 33.4% margin and $0.80 per share, up from $0.72 a year earlier.

For the full year, the letter narrowed revenue to $51.0 billion to $51.4 billion, kept the operating margin forecast at 31.5%, forecast about $3 billion of advertising revenue and about $12.5 billion of free cash flow. The number the market will grade hardest on October 20 is the fourth-quarter revenue forecast, because that is the one that decides whether growth is slowing from the 13% of the second quarter to something closer to 10%.

Three things changed since July

The co-CEO said growth is too slow. On September 30, Ted Sarandos said, "Overall, we're not growing as fast as I want us to, and we're working on making that move faster," after engagement rose only about 2% in the first half, as reported by Yahoo Finance. Engagement, not subscribers, is the metric Netflix now asks to be judged on, so expect the interview questions to go there first.

Disney licensed Netflix a library. On October 2, Disney and Netflix announced a licensing deal that put all five Ice Age films and two seasons of Percy Jackson and the Olympians on Netflix from October 4, with Will Trent, Tracker, This Is Us, and the Pixar films Soul and Elio to follow into early 2027. It is the kind of deal Disney spent five years refusing to make, and it arrives too late to move third-quarter numbers but will be the first question about the fourth quarter.

An analyst downgrade on engagement. HSBC cut Netflix to Hold from Buy on September 22 with a $76 target, down from $96, saying a near-term recovery in engagement looks unlikely as YouTube takes more television time, per Admiral Markets' summary of the note. The stock closed at $70.30 on October 9, below that reduced target.

Does a big drop keep dropping? What the month after says

This is the part of the data we found most useful, because it answers the question a holder actually asks after a bad reaction: wait it out, or get out?

Thirteen of the 39 reports produced a next-day drop of 5% or more. One month later, the stock was above its post-earnings close in only three of those thirteen. The median outcome was a further 4.0% decline. The July 2026 report was one of the three exceptions, up 2.2% a month later, helped by a broad market rally. The other two were April 2024 and January 2019.

More broadly, the direction of the first day held one month later in 28 of the 39 cases. Researchers call this post-earnings drift, and we explained the mechanics in our earnings season playbook. For Netflix the drift has been real in both directions: the October 2023 and October 2024 gains of 16% and 11% had grown to 35% and 23% a month later.

One more cut of the data: October reports. Netflix has reported nine third quarters since 2017. The stock rose after five and fell after four, a median move of +2.5%. The three Octobers from 2022 to 2024 were all double-digit gains. Then came October 2025, down 10.1%. Nine events is too few to call a pattern, and we would not trade on it.

How to hold or trade Netflix through October 20

We run an auto-trader inside members' own brokerage accounts, so we have to turn numbers like these into rules. Three that transfer to any Netflix position, and to the rest of this earnings season:

• Size for a 7% move, plan for 10%. The median reaction is 7.3% and one report in four has moved 10% or more. Position sizing that treats a 10% gap as an ordinary outcome, not a disaster, is the whole game. If a 10% move on Netflix would cost more than you have decided one trade may cost, the position is too large for the date.
• A stop-loss does not protect you from the gap. Netflix opened 11.9% lower on July 17. A stop at 5% below the prior close would have filled near the open, 11.9% down, not at 5%. We walked through the same problem with Tesla's October 21 report, which lands the day after Netflix. Automated stops still earn their place on every other day of the quarter; just do not count on them for the one morning that matters most.
• Decide before 1:00 PM Pacific whether you are holding through it. The history says the first-day direction usually continues for a month and that fading the open has usually lost. So the decision is binary and it is made before the release: hold a size you can live with through a 10% gap, or be flat. Deciding at 1:05 PM, with the stock already down 8% after hours, is how the worst trades of earnings season happen.

If you want rules like these applied for you, without watching an after-hours tape, that is what JorgAI does in the brokerage account you already have. You can set your rules up in a few minutes, before October 20.

Quick answers

When is Netflix's Q3 2026 earnings date? Tuesday, October 20, 2026, after the close. Results post at about 1:01 PM Pacific, and the video interview is at 1:45 PM Pacific on Netflix's investor relations YouTube channel.

What is Netflix expected to report? Netflix's own forecast from July: revenue of $12.86 billion, an operating margin of 33.2% and earnings of $0.82 per share. The fourth-quarter forecast in the letter will matter at least as much.

How much does Netflix stock move on earnings? Across its 39 reports since January 2017, the median next-day move was 7.3% in either direction, with 25 of 39 moves at 5% or more and 10 at 10% or more. It fell after 24 of the 39, including the last four.

Why did Netflix stock fall after its last earnings? On July 16, 2026, Netflix's quarter came in slightly ahead of expectations, but its third-quarter revenue forecast implied growth slowing to about 12%. The stock opened 11.9% lower the next day and closed down 7.3%.

Is Netflix stock a buy before earnings? That is a question for your own plan, not for us. What the history supports is sizing the position for a 7% to 10% move, deciding before the release whether to hold, and not relying on a stop-loss to limit the gap. If you would rather have rules like that enforced for you automatically, that is what JorgAI is built for.

Data: Netflix report dates from its Form 8-K filings with the SEC, January 2017 through July 2026; NFLX daily prices from Yahoo Finance, adjusted for the November 2025 split, through October 9, 2026; computed by JorgAI. Past patterns do not predict future returns. This article is education, not investment advice.