Against the backdrop of growing premium video competition,
Netflix -- during its fourth-quarter 2019 earnings phone call on Tuesday with analysts -- reiterated its opposition to adding an advertising model to its video packages.
Reed Hastings,
chief executive officer of Netflix, cited the company’s approach to focus solely on its consumers -- as well as looking to avoid a formidable online advertising industry with powerful
players: “Google and Facebook and Amazon are tremendously powerful at online advertising.... because they're integrating so much data from so many sources.”
Hastings added: “To grow [to a] $5 billion or $10 billion advertising business you have to rip that away from other advertiser [platforms].... Amazon, Google and Facebook -- which is quite
challenging.”
In this regard, Hastings says Netflix is more careful about its customers' data -- which is a positive: “We're not integrating everybody's data. We're not
controversial that way.”
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Netflix’s current model gets the company to greater revenue and profits, Hastings said, “because we don't have the exposure to something
that we’re strategically disadvantaged at which is online advertising against those big three, which over the next 10-years are just going to integrate incredible amounts of data about
everybody.”
Some analysts have projected that a still sizable Netflix negative cash flow could push the company to offer an advertising option to its products. For the
fourth quarter 2019, negative free cash flow was $1.7 billion, up from $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter 2018.
Hastings said, with regard to cash flow: “We're
on the glide path slowly towards positive free cash flow. We're excited about that but that's not coming from shrinking back our content spending. That's coming from the increase in revenue and
operating income.”