On July 3, 2012, Netflix Inc. CEO Reed Hastings posted a seemingly simple message to his personal Facebook page that read in part: “Netflix monthly viewing exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time ever in June.”
Neither Hastings nor his company had publicly shared these streaming numbers before. Perhaps for that reason, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) didn’t find Hastings’ posting so innocuous, especially considering that Netflix’s stock quickly jumped from $70.45 at the time of the post to $81.72 by the end of the following trading day.
