The Netflix Earnings Release: A How-To Guide

The Netflix, Inc. NFLX earnings release has been a bit of a head-scratcher for the last few quarters. Not the figures which indicate the company's performance over the last quarter -- the actual release itself. The release has been a cause for widespread confusion for both investor and the media recently. Below is a quick how-to guide on how investors can get to the most important numbers the fastest. (Of course, besides using Benzinga's Pro platform.) 1. Ignore the press release wires - Netflix doesn't normally issue an after-hours press release offering all the important numbers in one place (Heaven forbid!). Instead, as a number of companies have recently adopted, the company releases results on its investor relations/media center page at media.netflix.com/en/. 2. Go to Netflix's Quarterly Earnings page - http://ir.netflix.com/results.cfm. While Netflix's results weren't available to the public until about 4:20 p.m. EDT last quarter (Q4), the company normally reports immediately after the close bell, at about 4:01 p.m. 3. Look for a .pdf entitled "Q1 16 letter to shareholders" - Click it! 4. Scroll all the way to the very bottom of that .pdf to find the adjusted, or non-GAAP figure -- the one analysts compare against. An important note here: unlike the rest of the company's financial statements, the periods in this table will be switched. In other words, most of the release has financial statements showing the just-reported quarter to the furthest left and the year-over-year comparison to the right of that. The non-GAAP table shows last year's results furthest left and the just-reported figure to the right of that number. 5. Scroll down to the first official-looking financial table, labeled "Consolidated Statements of Operations" to find the comparable sales or revenue figure. 6. The guidance will be in the first table, which should be just under the first paragraph of the .pdf - guidance will be labeled "Q2 '16 Forecast" and should be the furthest right column of the first table.