5 things to know before the stock market opens Friday, October 18

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

Shares of Netflix jumped in U.S. premarket trading after the company reported third-quarter earnings that beat expectations. The streaming giant reported earnings of $5.40 per share, higher than the LSEG consensus estimate of $5.12 per share. Revenue was $9.83 billion, also higher than the $9.77 billion expected by analysts. While not yet its primary driver of growth, Netflix’s ad-tier memberships jumped 35% quarter over quarter, and the company plans to launch the service in Canada during the coming quarter and more broadly in 2025. Analysts at Citi said in a note that they expect Netflix shares to trade higher Friday on the back of the earnings report.

The Biden administration announced Thursday that it would forgive another $4.5 billion in student debt for more than 60,000 borrowers, increasing the number of borrowers benefiting from the program under President Joe Biden’s administration to over 1 million. The latest round of relief comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s fixes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which is meant for certain not-for-profit and government employees to have their federal student loans canceled after 10 years. But the program, signed into law in 2007, was full of technicalities that disqualified up to 98% of applicants in some years. Since Biden took office, the Education Department has relaxed the program’s requirements and overhauled how it’s managed.

Google announced Thursday it was replacing Prabhakar Raghavan, the company’s search and ads boss, with longtime Google executive Nick Fox. Raghavan is moving into the role of chief technologist after 12 years of leading teams across the search company, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post. Fox will lead Google’s Knowledge and Information division, which includes the company’s search, ads and commerce products, Pichai said. Google continues to restructure its teams to move more quickly in the artificial intelligence arms race, where it faces increased competition and is dealing with several antitrust lawsuits related to its search and ads business.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed by Israel’s military forces. Sinwar was previously the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and assumed the top spot of the Iran-backed organization in August, following the assassination of former political chief Ismail Haniyeh. Sinwar’s death marks the largest blow Israel has dealt Hamas in the yearlong conflict sparked by the Palestinian militant group’s Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel, which leaders of the Jewish state have accused Sinwar of orchestrating. It remains unclear who would succeed Sinwar and what impact his death could have on stalled negotiations for a cease-fire.

— CNBC’s Ryan Browne, Sarah Whitten, Annie Nova, Jennifer Elias, Ece Yildirim, Ruxandra Iordache and Natasha Turak contributed to this report.