For Netflix, 2024’s second quarter’s subscriber growth was never going to match the first — but it actually came fairly close.
From April to June, Netflix added 8.05 million global paid subscribers for a new grand total of 277.65 million, again breezing past expectations. Wall Street predicted the streamer would add 4.8 million subs in Q2.
Netflix added 9.33 million subs in Q1, blowing away Wall Street’s forecast of 4.9 million.
Enjoy these quarterly subscriber updates while you can: Netflix has said it will stop sharing those numbers regularly come 2025.
Netflix posted Q2 earnings per share (EPS) of $4.88 on $9.559 in revenue. Wall Street expected EPS of $4.74 on $9.53 billion in revenue.
Executives have stated that revenue is Netflix’s key metric, replacing subscriber count. The streamer has attacked the KPI through its password-sharing crackdown and the addition of advertising. That first initiative has been a huge hit — the second one has a ways to go. The elimination of Netflix’s lowest-priced ad-free tier should help jumpstart signups to its ad-supported plan.
Shares of NFLX closed Thursday’s regular trading day at $643.04 apiece.
Netflix’s highlights in the quarter included “Baby Reindeer,” its Tom Brady Roast, and “Bridgerton” Season 3, which is already on the streamer‘s all-time Top 10 — and rising. It had some movies that performed relatively well, like “Atlas,” “Hit Man,” “Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver,” but films have a much shorter tail than series do.
According to a HarrisX study for the media analysts at MoffettNathanson, Netflix released 92 original seasons of series in Q2, down from 97 in the same period last year. But the craziest poll about the Q2 2024 goes to Wedbush, which found that 4 percent of U.S. adults have “never heard of” Netflix.
More to come…
