All the naysayers were correct. Netflix is losing money and subscribers in North America.
Netflix did add subscribers, but not in the markets where they cracked down on password sharing. They added subscribers in countries where they don’t charge very much for subscriptions. So they didn’t make much money from the new subs.
Shareholders. If you buy a share of a company for $5, you expect it to go up in value so you can make money from your investment.
Any publicly traded company must (by law!) try to maximize profit beyond what they’re already doing, to satisfy shareholders. They could be sued if they don’t.