Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos conceded this week that the streaming giant is not growing as fast as he wants, even as shares already slid after a Wall Street downgrade.
Speaking at Bloomberg’s 2026 Screentime event on Wednesday, Sarandos put the company’s pace in plain terms. Breitbart News reported his remarks, drawing on coverage from the Hollywood Reporter.
“Overall, we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,” Sarandos said.
"Overall, we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,"
That line lands against a thin growth record and a recent hit to the stock. Netflix posted a mere two-percent viewership growth over the first half of 2026. Last month, shares fell five percent after Wells Fargo downgraded the stock over worrying trends in user engagement.
Sarandos later offered a softer take on the same business. “The business is great and growing fine,” he said. Investors watching the chart may hear both lines and ask which one matches the numbers.
Netflix has pushed into live programming to spark engagement, including high-profile NFL games. Sarandos said the company puts roughly five percent of its $20 billion annual content budget into live shows. That slice delivers only about one percent of total viewership.
Five percent of the budget for one percent of the audience is a hard ratio to defend without a clear payoff. Sarandos argued live events still help on the subscriber side. He said live programming has driven new sign-ups and limited cancellations.
He also drew a bright line on what Netflix will not chase. “We’re definitely... not in the UGC [user-created content] business,” he said. “We’re in the professionally produced content business.”
"We’re definitely... not in the UGC [user-created content] business,"
That stance keeps Netflix in expensive, studio-style production rather than cheaper creator clips. It also keeps the pressure on the content budget to deliver growth that still is not moving as fast as the co-CEO wants.
Asked whether he regrets Netflix’s short-lived winning bid for Warner Bros., without the Discovery assets, Sarandos did not hesitate. “Nahhh,” he said. “I think the plan was solid.”
He framed the offer as disciplined, not reckless. “We won the deal at some point, so we think we priced it right, at our scale.” He added: “That was the top price point where I thought we could return value to our shareholders with that asset. Any more than that, I thought we’d be taking it into negative territory, even with our scale.”
In other words, he cast the failed or short-lived bid as a ceiling set to protect shareholders rather than a chase for trophy assets at any cost. That message may calm some concerns. It does not erase the slower growth he already flagged or the five-percent share drop after the Wells Fargo call on engagement.
Put the pieces side by side. Viewership rose only two percent in the first half of 2026. Live content takes a meaningful share of a $20 billion content budget and returns a sliver of total viewing. The stock took a five-percent hit last month on engagement worries. And the co-CEO says growth is not fast enough, then says the business is growing fine.
Shareholders do not need a slogan. They need the engagement curve and the subscriber math to move. Sarandos says the company is working to make growth faster. The first-half figure and the recent downgrade show why that work is not optional.
Netflix remains a major streamer with a huge content checkbook and a bet on live sports and polished shows. Scale alone does not guarantee the pace investors want. When the co-CEO says growth is too slow and Wall Street has already marked the stock down on engagement, the market is doing what markets do: keep score in public.
Slow growth, a lopsided live-content return, and a downgraded stock are not a branding problem. They are a results problem, and results are the only language shareholders finally accept.
