Netflix showed three months ago that not all of its business model is sacred, but the streaming giant seems willing to go only so far in testing the faithful.

The company said Tuesday afternoon that it lost about 970,000 total paid subscribers during the second quarter—less than half of the decline it had previously forecast. That was enough to send the battered stock up 8% after hours; Netflix shares had sunk 42% since the company shocked investors in April with its first subscriber loss in more than a decade.

Still, the results made clear that Netflix continues to face significant challenges. The streaming pioneer has lost a total of 3 million subscribers during the first half of the year in its two largest markets of the U.S./Canada and Europe. They account for three-quarters of the company’s revenue. Netflix also projected adding 1 million net new subscribers in the third quarter—well below the 2.3 million expected by Wall Street, despite the fact that it broke up the release of the latest season of its mega-popular “Stranger Things” series to have the last two episodes drop at the beginning of the current quarter.

That sort of stunt doesn’t seem destined to become a thing. In its quarterly letter to shareholders Tuesday, Netflix touted the so-called binge release model that it pioneered for TV series, arguing that a “focus on choice and control for members influences all aspects of our strategy, creating what we believe to be a significant long-term business advantage.”

It also noted that the cumulative volume of Twitter mentions for “Stranger Things,” which outpaced those of Disney’s “Obi-Wan Kenobi” series and the box-office smash “Top Gun: Maverick,” also reinforced the value of its binge release strategy.

That suggests Netflix isn’t scrapping its entire playbook yet in the interest of reinvigorating subscriber growth. Following its disastrous first-quarter report, the company did a rapid about-face on both advertising and account-sharing. It now plans launches next year for both an ad-supported tier as well as a “paid sharing” offering that will charge users more who share their accounts with people outside their households. Both will likely take time to grow to a level that helps the company’s revenue in any significant way.

Netflix will need to keep its binge watchers well-fed until then.

Write to Dan Gallagher at dan.gallagher@wsj.com