Netflix (NFLX) is set to report its second quarter earnings after the market close on Thursday, July 18 as Bank of America and Morgan Stanley — among other firms — have raised their price targets on the streamer. Bloomberg Intelligence senior media analyst Geetha Ranganathan joins Market Domination to break down what investors can expect from the streaming giant's earnings.

Ranganathan notes that expectations are "very, very high" going into Netflix's second quarter earnings. "What is really ironic, though, is they are actually trying to move away from subscriber numbers. They said that they're going to stop disclosing subscriber metrics altogether starting in the first quarter of 2025. But I think all of this optimism that we're seeing kind of heading into the second quarter earnings is actually off of subscriber numbers."

She notes that in the first quarter of 2024, Netflix reported 9.3 million new subscriber adds, and it is likely to top the expected 4.7 million in its second quarter.

While Netflix's advertising growth has been slower than expected, Ranganathan points to several new opportunities that are appealing to advertisers, from its deal with WWE to the Christmas Day NFL games. She expects these deals to be "a big bump for their ad business" as the streaming competition heats up.

Ranganathan believes that "at this point, it's safe to say that Netflix has pretty much won the streaming wars," citing the 2 billion viewers reached every day and its broad catalog of content offerings."The one metric that we really look at when it comes to Netflix and when it comes to all streaming players is engagement. And engagement is very, very high for Netflix. It's higher than almost all of its other competitors."

As Netflix continues facing high expectations, Ranganathan adds, "I think Netflix is in the best position that it's ever been competitively, and also financially as well as fundamentally. So they're really firing here on all cylinders."

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This post was written by Melanie Riehl