While other streaming services are in the red, Netflix is profitable. The market leader has gained millions of new customers in recent months.
Netflix continues to grow unabated and wants to increasingly steal viewers from traditional television. In the last quarter, the video streaming market leader gained a good eight million customer households. There were also significant increases in sales and profits – and Netflix now has more money to invest in new films and series.
Netflix now has around 277.7 million customer households worldwide. Since last year, the service has been cracking down on password sharing. This is also driving the growth in user numbers. Many previous free riders have taken out their own subscriptions instead of turning their backs on Netflix. In the last quarter, a new season of the series “Bridgerton” and films such as “Atlas” and “Hit Man” (in Germany as “A Killer Romance” in cinemas) kept customers on board.
At the same time, many people choose the cheapest way to watch Netflix: a subscription with advertising. In countries where this is offered, 45 percent of new customers choose this option.
Netflix entertainment for 600 million viewers
Netflix faces the unique challenge of creating a program for more than 600 million people who use the service for an average of several hours a day, as co-CEO Ted Sarandos emphasized.
The streaming giant therefore spends around 17 billion dollars a year on series, films and live broadcasts. And the amount will increase as sales grow, said Sarandos. Netflix has recently been experimenting more with live events and is also venturing into the expensive business of sports broadcasts with two games from the American football league NFL at Christmas.
Despite its dominance in the streaming business, Netflix says it has a share of less than ten percent of TV usage. In the US, for example, the service is just behind Google’s video platform YouTube. For further growth, Netflix is focusing on the remaining 80 percent of TV time, said Sarandos.
Sales and profits increase
The Sales increased in the last quarter by around 17 percent year-on-year to 9.6 billion dollars (8.77 billion euros), as Netflix announced after the US stock market closed. The bottom line was that profits rose from 1.49 to almost 2.15 billion dollars.
Only in its revenue forecast for the current quarter did Netflix slightly miss analysts’ expectations. At the same time, the streaming leader has already restricted the growth in the number of customers to be lower than in the same quarter last year, as the crackdown on free riders had a strong impact at that time.
Netflix is now somewhat more optimistic about a sales increase of between 14 and 15 percent for the year as a whole. Previously, the company had been targeting 13 to 15 percent. The stock was barely changed in after-hours trading in the US, after initially being in the red.
No interest in bundling with rivals
Netflix is profitable while competitors like Disney and Paramount are struggling to get their streaming services out of the red. The market leader is aware of its strength and has clearly rejected bundled offers with other services that rivals resort to: It is already a popular address for television entertainment on its own.
Netflix also sees an advantage in the fact that films and series are produced in different countries. They achieve very high viewing figures in their home markets – and some even become international hits. A prime example of this is the South Korean series “Squid Game”, which is set to have a second season this year.
Text: dpa/ Editor: JN
Source: www.digitalfernsehen.de
