Netflix reports better-than-expected Q1 results

Netflix appears to be getting back into the swing of streaming.

After some disappointing news in 2022, the company’s first quarter of 2024 results show significant growth in both subscriber counts and revenue.

2022 was particularly hard on the company, when it reported its first-ever streaming subscriber loss, news that that sent its stock down and also prompted the company to explore adding ads to select, lower-priced plans.

Revenue was up 14.8% to $9.37 billion, which beat its own guidance to Wall Street. Subscription counts came in at just under 270 million members. It added 9.33 million members from around the world during the quarter, including a 65% increase in ad-supported tier total counts.

Compare that to 3.7% revenue growth in the some quarter in 2023. That quarter also saw only 1.75 million signups.

In other areas, net revenue was up 79% year over year, coming in at $2.332 billion.

Looking ahead, the streamer says it will see 16% revenue growth in the next quarter of 2024.

So what’s driving the growth?

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Netflix offered a variety of explanations, including the debut of series such as “The Last Airbender,” “Griselda” and “3 Body Problem.”

It’s also been able to capitalize on ad-supported tiers as well as its ongoing effort to reduce password sharing and convert users currently using someone else’s account to a discounted paid account.

During the announcement, the company also noted it will stop releasing quarterly membership figures and average remember per member starting in 2025. 

The reason, at least according to Netflix, is that subscriber figures are just one datapoint in its increasingly diversified way of generate revenue. 

It’s notoriously hard to get data such as subscriber counts and hours streamed unless the company opts to release them. Even then, unless the data has been audited or certified, it’s still hard to get a truly clear picture of what the numbers suggest, especially without carefully reading a company’s methodology.

There are third part companies that attempt to track this type of information by examining a small pool of data and then using statistical models to estimate total figures such as most popular shows, hours streamed, account signups and total subscriber count. 

It’s difficult to tell just how accurate these types of estimates are, however.