Here's How Long It Took Netflix Stock To Reach A $100B Market Cap

Netflix, Inc. NFLX reinvented how many of us watch movies at home, and later did the same for how we watch TV shows. It pretty much spelled the end of the video rental store business, and it was a pioneer in using algorithms to predict what customers might want.

And many of us remember when it didn't exist.

The trailblazing home entertainment company has only been around a couple of decades, having been founded in 1997 by software engineers and entrepreneurs Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph.

A DVD Mailer

It started by sending customers DVDs in the mail, updating only slightly the video rental company model it would eventually replace. It added value by saving customers having to go out to the video store, and with that algorithm that could help project what movies customers might want.

But its real foray into the modern world began when it started streaming movies in 2010.

Early on, not everyone saw that Netflix would be such a disruptive force in home entertainment. Hastings says the company sought a partnership with Blockbuster - but was rejected.

Today, Blockbuster is no more and this week, Netflix had a market cap just north of $166 billion. It was the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 over the last decade.

How Long It Took Netflix Stock To Get To $100B

Netflix went public in 2002 with an IPO in which it initially sold 5.5 million shares at $15 each, posting a May, 2002 market cap of just over $250 million. At the time, it was still mailing out disks, nearly 200,000 a day to over 650,000 subscribers.

The company started posting profits the following year, and after an initial drop to below $125 million, its market cap began to climb, crossing the $1 billion mark in October of 2003. There would be ups and downs, including a plunge back to below $500 million in 2005, but it mostly was above $1 billion for much of the 2000s.

But starting in the summer of 2012, as Netflix shifted from a DVD deliverer to a streaming company, its value began to grow on a long trendline toward internet TV behemoth. It hit $10 billion in 2013 and $50 billion in 2015.

Netflix crossed the $100 billion market cap threshold in January of 2018, just 21 years after its founders started the company and 16 years after its IPO.

While intense competition has started to threaten Netflix' core business model, it remains one of the most valuable companies with a market cap now around $165 billion.

A Timeline Of Netflix Milestones On Rise To $100 Billion

• 1997: Founded
• 2002: IPO
• 2003: $1 Billion Market Cap
• 2010: Netflix Starts Streaming
• 2013: $10 Billion Market Cap
• 2014: $25 Billion Market Cap
• 2015: $50 Billion Market Cap
• 2018: $100 Billion Market Cap

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Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash