LOS GATOS — Netflix shares fell about 6% in extended trading on Tuesday after the streaming company cut its advertising revenue forecast for the year and narrowed its full-year sales outlook to the low end of its earlier range, overshadowing third-quarter profit that beat Wall Street estimates.

The results add to pressure on a stock that has lost close to half its value since its June 2025 peak. Investors have grown uneasy about slowing viewing growth, a younger advertising business that has not hit its targets, and competition from YouTube for viewers' time.

Netflix earned $3.66 billion, or 87 cents a share, in the three months to Sept. 30, CNBC reported. That compared with $2.55 billion, or 59 cents a share, a year earlier, and topped the 82 cents a share analysts polled by LSEG had expected. The company said part of the jump in profit came from the timing of expenses.

Revenue rose almost 12% from a year earlier to $12.87 billion, in line with estimates. Netflix said growth in memberships and price increases that took effect in March drove the gain, and that customers had responded to the higher prices as it expected.

The outlook disappointed. Netflix now expects 2026 revenue of $51.1 billion, a 13% increase on last year. That sits at the bottom of the $51 billion to $51.4 billion range it gave in July and below the $51.2 billion analysts had forecast, according to LSEG data cited by CNBC.

For the fourth quarter, the company forecast revenue of $13.44 billion, short of the consensus estimate of $13.51 billion, Yahoo Finance reported. Growth of about 11.5% in the final quarter would mark a slowdown from 17.6% a year earlier, according to TheWrap.

The sharpest change came in advertising. Netflix said it now expects about $2.7 billion in ad revenue this year, down from the roughly $3 billion it had forecast, because some ad product features have rolled out more slowly than planned.

"We set big growth targets for our ads business this year," co-Chief Executive Greg Peters said on a call with analysts. He said the company was building its ad technology faster than its rivals, "but we are currently a bit behind our aggressive target for the year."

Peters also defended the decision to accept slower ad growth now. He said "a modest short-term hit for a better long-term strategic position is a good ultimate trade-off," TheWrap reported. Netflix plans to launch the ad-supported plan in 15 more countries in 2027, starting in March with nine markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa as well as Colombia, Peru and New Zealand.

Viewing time has become the central worry for investors. Netflix stopped reporting subscriber numbers in the first half of 2025, and it said in July that members watched 97 billion hours in the first six months of this year, an increase of just 2%. It did not give an overall viewing figure for the third quarter, though it said view hours in India rose 24%, AFP reported.

"We know there's some investor concern about our view hours growth," Netflix said in its letter to shareholders. Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos was more direct about its home market. "We do need better execution in the US," he said, according to AFP.

Peters described the company's engagement as solid. "But we know that we can do better," he told analysts, according to TheWrap.

Some analysts were not convinced. Geetha Ranganathan, a senior media analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said the fourth-quarter forecast pointed to "a slowing growth algorithm, which kind of spells trouble for the company without a doubt," Yahoo Finance reported.

John Belton, a portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, told AFP that Netflix "has underperformed significantly over the last 6-12 months," citing soft engagement, slowing revenue growth, a weaker outlook for margins and changes in its content leadership.

The quarter follows a turbulent stretch for the company. Netflix has said it will cut about 6% of its workforce, or roughly 1,000 jobs, its largest reduction since 2022. Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria was replaced by Peter Rice, a former Disney executive, and film chief Dan Lin also left, TheWrap reported.

Netflix said the job cuts would reduce its fourth-quarter operating margin by about 120 basis points, CNBC reported. TheWrap said the company still expects a fourth-quarter margin of 26%, up from 24.5% a year earlier.

Competition for screen time has intensified. YouTube took a record 14.2% of US television streaming in July, compared with 7.8% for Netflix, according to Nielsen figures cited by AFP. Netflix has pushed further into live events and sports, with the NFL and WWE among the partners streaming events on the service, AFP reported, and it plans 30 theatrical releases this year.

Netflix expects to spend about $20 billion on content in 2026 and remains open to selective acquisitions. It said in July that it would move its engagement reports to an annual schedule, TheWrap reported.

The stock was down about 44% over the past year before Tuesday's report, TheWrap said. The company's next test for its advertising plans comes in March, when the ad tier begins its rollout across the first of the new markets.