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The biggest gets biggest-er. Netflix ended September 2024 with 282.72 million global paid subscribers — growth of 5.07 million subs since the end of June. Fewer than 1 million of those (690,000 to be pretty exact) came from the U.S. and Canada, the world’s richest — but most matured (and it shows) — streaming region.
Media analysts expected Netflix to add somewhere between 3.9 million and 4.5 million global paid subscribers over the past three months. While Netflix didn’t blow that number away as it has in recent quarters, a beat is a beat.
Recent growth has not just been a series of beats, its been a series of beasts:
Those giant leaps — and to a lesser extent, the growth Netflix reported today — can be primarily attributed to the streamer’s password-sharing crackdown. Netflix’s launch of a cheaper, ad-supported tier has also helped, but marginally so. With gains waning from what Netflix calls its “paid sharing” program, it is high time for advertising to scale.
Wall Street expected third quarter earnings per share (EPS) of $5.12 on $9.77 billion in revenue, according to consensus forecasts. Netflix on Thursday reported EPS of $5.40 on $9.825 billion in revenue for a net income of $2.364 billion.
Netflix’s own internal forecasting as of July 18, 2024 anticipated Q3 earnings of $5.10 per share on $9.727 billion in revenue. The company expected to turn a profit of $2.237 billion from July-September.
Netflix no longer shares its internal estimates for quarterly subscriber additions. Further, the company says that it won’t even share its quarterly subscriber gains (or losses!) come 2025. We expect to be able to reverse-engineer that growth (or decline!) pretty easily, however.
Financially and membership-wise, it is a good-news day. An after-hours stock surge is proof.
Though Netflix expects to top $10 billion in revenue for the final quarter of 2024, it also forecasts a lighter profit from Q3 to Q4 (but a much larger profit for Q4 2024 vs. Q4 2023).
So there’s a lot of good news for investors in there. Here’s some for members: Netflix did not announce a new price increase on Thursday. Media analysts anticipated one, as did we.
Film highlights from what we shorthand to be the “summer” quarter included the new “Beverly Hills Cop,” a “SpongeBob” spinoff focused on the character Sandy Cheeks, Mark Wahlberg/Halle Berry vehicle “The Union,” and the action-thrilled “Rebel Ridge.”
TV remains Netflix’s bread and butter, of course. The top series in the quarter were “Emily in Paris” Season 4, limited series “The Perfect Couple,” “Cobra Kai” Season 6, and Ryan Murphy’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Eric Menendez Story.”
Netflix executives will follow up this afternoon’s earnings announcement with a video interview at 4:45 p.m. ET.
