--- title: The Top-Performing Stock of the 2010s Transformed Entertainment — And Returned Nearly 4,000% description: Netflix stock returned nearly 4,000% during the 2010s. authors: - name: Prachi Bhardwaj role: Data Reporter url: https://money.com/author/prachi-bhardwaj/ at_money_since: 2018 articles: 92 covers: - Investing - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit Cards - Economy and Politics - Education - Housing - Identity Theft - Lifestyle - Loans - Personal Finance - Shopping - Taxes - Technology former_staff: true published: '2019-12-23T15:24:32.000Z' modified: '2024-05-17T04:30:32.000Z' section: Investing tags: - stocks word_count: 584 canonical: https://money.com/netflix-top-stock/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Stranger Things](https://img.money.com/2019/12/tcdstth_ec075.jpg) *Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection* Back in 2000, Blockbuster declined a $50 million deal to acquire a little DVD-by-mail subscription company called Netflix. Today, that company is arguably the world's largest streaming service, an award-winning production house — and the highest performing stock of the 2010s. Even by the bullish stock market's standards, Netflix's decade long run is remarkable. By Dec. 2 of this year, stock had sky-rocketed from its $7.87 price on the final day of 2009 to $309.99. That’s a 3,839% growth over the course of a decade, compared to the [S&P 500's 179%](https://www.forecast-chart.com/historical-sp-500.html). With a return of that magnitude, a $1,000 investment in Netflix on Dec. 31, 2009 would be worth $39,389 as of the first week of December of this year, making Netflix the top-performing stock in the S&P 500 during the teens. The same $1,000 in index would be worth only $2,793. What made Netflix’s decade better than everyone else’s? Well first, it's worth mentioning that Netflix was a relatively small company at the start of the decade, so it's success was magnified by the fact that it had a lot of room to grow. While Amazon was sporting a $58 billion market vale and a $135 stock price at the end of 2009, Netflix was still a $3 billion company with a stock price below $10. (Amazon ultimately finished the decade as the eighth highest performing stock, with an increase of 1,224%.) And then there were the milestones. In January 2010, Netflix was still a U.S.-only streaming service, meaning there was an upper limit on the number of subscribers it could add. That was a problem since subscribers are the company's primary source of revenue and the metric that drives the stock price: Investors look to 'subscriber growth' to determine Netflix's success each quarter, and those numbers weren't showing long-term promise. It didn't help that Netflix relied completely on outside content, like *Friends* or *Grey's Anatomy*. The platform didn't provide something you couldn't get anywhere else — if consumers didn't want to pay for Netflix anymore, they could just find those on syndication or on DVD. So Netflix did a couple of things to fix its subscriber problem...at least temporarily. In 2010, it started expanding its business beyond the U.S. By 2017, it had made itself available to viewers in [189 other countries](https://help.netflix.com/en/node/14164), and today, Netflix has upwards of 158 domestic and international subscribers, with [90% of its new subscribers](https://www.wsj.com/articles/netflix-says-90-of-subscriber-growth-comes-from-overseas-11576532846) coming from abroad. It also started releasing original content, starting with House of Cards in February 2013, and consequently inventing the word [binge-watch](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-01-01%202019-12-17&geo=US&q=binge-watch). The content wasn't just good — it was award-winning good, and it was available exclusively on Netflix's own platform. All of a sudden, people *needed* Netflix in order to keep up with the best TV shows and movies. It was a move that shook traditional production studios, set the stage for numerous other streaming platforms, and boosted [Netflix's stock](https://www.google.com/search?q=netflix+stock+price&oq=netflix+stock+price&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i61.2351j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8). The 2010s weren't all good news, though. Netflix hasn't seen a positive cash flow since 2011, which has led to a good bit of skepticism about the company's business model. Creating content requires money, after all, and Netflix doesn’t profit off of ads or movie tickets the way a normal studio does. Every time subscription rates go up, consumers get angry. And keeping rates down will only become a bigger priority as competition increases (think: Apple TV+, Disney+). This next decade could be a rockier one for Netflix. Although that sounds like something Blockbuster might have said all those years ago. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/netflix-top-stock/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Investing", "item": "https://money.com/investing/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Stocks", "item": "https://money.com/stocks/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "The Top-Performing Stock of the 2010s Transformed Entertainment — And Returned Nearly 4,000%" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/netflix-top-stock/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/netflix-top-stock/", "name": "The Top-Performing Stock of the 2010s Transformed Entertainment — And Returned Nearly 4,000%", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2019-12-23T15:24:32.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/netflix-top-stock/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/netflix-top-stock/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-05-17T04:30:32.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "The Top-Performing Stock of the 2010s Transformed Entertainment — And Returned Nearly 4,000%", "articleSection": "Investing", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2019/12/tcdstth_ec075.jpg", "width": 5954, "height": 3300, "caption": "191220-Netflix-Stranger-Things" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Prachi Bhardwaj", "url": "https://money.com/author/prachi-bhardwaj/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/prachi-bhardwaj/#author", "image": "https://img.money.com/2018/10/Prachi.Bhardwaj.jpg?quality=85&w=640&h=640&crop=1" } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2019-12-23T15:24:32.000Z", "description": "Netflix stock returned nearly 4,000% during the 2010s.", "abstract": "Netflix stock returned nearly 4,000% during the 2010s.", "@id": "https://money.com/netflix-top-stock/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2024-05-17T04:30:32.000Z", "wordCount": 584, "keywords": [ "stocks" ], "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Investment", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Stock", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock" ] } ] } ] } ```