In a shocking news for the world’s best and the most sought after streaming service, Reed Hastings, the Co-Founder of Netflix will be stepping down as the Chief Executive Officer.
Hastings co-founded the company 25 years ago, in 1997 as a DVD-by-mail service stated in a blog post that recently he has been increasingly delegating the management.
‘Now is “the right time to complete my succession”’, he wrote.
“Our board has been discussing succession planning for many years (even founders need to evolve!),” he further added.
Reed says, the first 25 years of the company were fun and exciting, and is now looking forward to the next quarter of the century.
Meanwhile, Chief Operating Officer, Greg Peters, along with Ted Sarandos has been promoted as the co-chief executive. Sarandos, who was initially in charge of programming during the company’s huge investment period was promoted as the co-chief executive officer alongside Hastings.
The company’s shares were seen jumping more than 6% in the after-hours trading. This change has been made after Netflix lost a whopping share of its market value in the past year, especially after it revealed that its decade-long growth spurt had ended.
With Sarandos and Peters donning the chairs, Netflix now plans to regain its momentum and lead the platform into a new era of the entertainment industry.
Following the footsteps of the classics, Jeff Bezos and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Hastings will still stay on the chair. Although, the billionaire founder of Netflix has said that he has been planning to “spend more time on philanthropy”, but also “remain very much focused on the growth of the company and its stock doing well.”
The company also said that this change was implemented as Netflix added about 7.7mn subscribers in the fourth quarter, which was very well above expectations. This massive jump was owing to some of the most popular programs such as the recently released Addams Family spin off Wednesday and also the Harry & Meghan documentary series. Following the release of these shows, Netflix had forecast that this would add about 4.5mn subscribers in the quarter.
