Netflix Adds 9.3 Million Subscribers in Q1 2024, Continuing Growth From Password-Sharing, Ad-Supported Changes
The cycle of quarterly earnings reports from top media companies is beginning again. Netflix is the first streaming provider to give customers and analysts a peak at its first results for 2024, and as expected the streamer has continued to grow. The streamer added 9.33 million customers in the first three months of this year, bringing its new total to 269.6 million. Netflix was able to add 2.53 million customers in the United States and Canada, increasing its UCAN total to 82.66 million. This represents a 7% year-over-year growth and eight consecutive quarters of positive subscriber totals in the region.
Moving to the Asia-Pacific region, Netflix added 2.16 million new customers for a total of 47.5M. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa added 2.92M new Netflix subscribers, and Latin America pulled in 1.72M more. In total, the streamer experienced 16% year-over-year growth in paid customers.
The streamer’s quarterly results exceeded Wall Street expectations. According to Variety, Morgan Stanley predicted that Netflix would add 7.5 million new subscribers during the quarter, and TD Cowen’s John Blackledge forecast the streamer would net 5.11 new viewers.
From a financial perspective, Netflix reported revenue of $9.37 billion, up 14.8% year-over-year. Operating income also increased a staggering 54% during that period. As compared to the first quarter of 2023, Netflix’s average revenue per member (ARM) rose 1%, or 4% FX-neutral, when factoring in international exchange rates.
As part of its letter to shareholders, Netflix announced that beginning in the first quarter of 2025, it will no longer report subscriber totals on a quarterly basis. The company stopped providing individual quarterly guidance on subscriber projections, and this is the next step. Netflix’s rationale is that because the streamer now has multiple different ways that customers can experience the platform, the raw subscriber totals don’t provide as much information as they did in the past. Between ad-free, ad-supported, and paid-sharing plans, not all subscriptions are equal, so the world’s largest streamer will presumably now focus more on the financial details than customer counts.
What Were Netflix’s Biggest Stories in the First Part of 2024?
The same day that Netflix dropped its earnings report for the fourth quarter of 2023, it announced that it had made a blockbuster agreement with WWE to stream episodes of “WWE Raw” starting in 2025. The deal will see Netflix pay $500 million per year for “WWE Raw” rights for 10 years, giving the streamer its first weekly live event, and its first regular sports entertainment offering.
The company indicated that a new price increase could be on the way for viewers soon. In its Q4 2023 shareholders letter, Netflix told readers that “we’ll occasionally ask our members to pay a little extra” in order to allow the streamer to continue adding content and upgrading its features. There’s no timeline for Netflix price increases as of now, but they could come to customers this year.
Viewers who watch Netflix on Apple devices were confronted with the need to find a new payment method to continue their subscriptions during the first quarter. Netflix announced that it would stop accepting payments from existing customers through Apple in late February, forcing viewers who had autopay set up to find a different method of compensating the streamer for their account.
Netflix
Netflix is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 3,000+ movies, 2,000+ TV Shows, and Netflix Originals like Stranger Things, Squid Game, The Crown, Tiger King, and Bridgerton. They are constantly adding new shows and movies. Some of their Academy Award-winning exclusives include Roma, Marriage Story, Mank, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.