Yesterday, Netflix put out an ambiguous brief press release saying that they plan to raise another $1.5B in debt for “general corporate purposes.”
Definitely using that line the next time we need to borrow money…
The announcement lists “acquisitions, production, and development” under its umbrella of content and content activities, which means that, rather than paring back spending on their original series, they’re continuing to ramp up.
Same strategy, different day
Netflix has been putting more and more debt under its pillow in hopes that the content fairy will leave it a hit series.
According to Crunchbase, prior to this round, they’d raised about $2.7B in debt post-IPO — the most recent of which was a $1.6B round of debt in fall 2017, also for general corporate purposes.
And, at least for now, it appears to be working.
They just had a big Q1
In their letter to shareholders Netflix touted $3.7B in quarterly revenue with a $290m net income.
They also gained 7.4m subscribers, beating analyst predictions by over 1m and bringing them to 125m total subscribers at the end of March.
Netflix predicts as much as $8B in content spending for 2018 — and it seems like they won’t stop until they’ve single-handedly produced or purchased every person on the planet’s favorite TV show.
