The year 2024 is off to a particularly good start for Netflix. The platform gained more than 13 million additional subscribers during the holiday season, allowing it to reach a total of 260.28 million subscribers.
The Californian group “establishes itself as the undisputed leader in the streaming war,” Ross Benes, Insider Intelligence analyst, reacted Tuesday after the publication of the company’s quarterly results. It even “exceeded expectations by adding 13 million subscribers worldwide, including nearly 3 million in the North American market, where the audience is the most saturated.”
A new paid rule on passwords
Netflix, which had already gained nearly 9 million subscribers during the summer, owes this spectacular growth to its stricter policy on sharing passwords between users and to its cheaper subscription with advertising. “We are at 23 million active monthly users” of this formula, said Greg Peters, co-general director. In November, Netflix announced 15 million.
“The subscriber growth thanks to the new regulation will eventually fade,” noted Ross Benes, however. But, according to him, the streaming pioneer “plans to support the demand of its audience by pursuing its ambitions in live programming”. The company also announced Tuesday morning that it had signed a ten-year broadcasting agreement with the American professional wrestling league WWE, for $5 billion. From 2025, it will gain exclusivity in the United States for Raw, WWE’s flagship show which last year was among the best audiences on American cable.
Sport as a new goal
On an accounting level, the streaming pioneer achieved $8.8 billion in turnover in the fourth quarter (+12.5% in one year), of which it generated a net profit of $938 million, a slightly below analysts’ expectations, but well above the 55 million for the same period the previous year. And he has big ambitions for the current quarter, betting on growth of 13%, or more than $9 billion in revenue, and nearly $2 billion in net profits.
Netflix’s operating margin came in at 20.6% for its full 2023 fiscal year, higher than its forecasts, while Disney+ is still figuring out how to achieve profitability. Enough to allow the Los Gatos group to expand further into other entertainment areas already well occupied by its competitors, such as sport.
2024-01-24 05:06:20
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