Netflix Nears 118 Million Streaming Subscribers; Market Cap Tops $100 Billion

Netflix announced their Q4 earnings today, revealing it added 8.3 million new streaming subscribers (nearly 2 million in US alone), easily beating analyst estimates of about 7.2 million total new subscribers, marking their highest quarter in history. Total streaming subscribers now sit at 117.58 million worldwide.

The positive news sent the company’s stock up 9 per cent in after hours trading, taking Netflix’s market cap beyond $100 billion USD.

Netflix said in 2017, average streaming hours per membership increased 9 per cent year over year. The company plans to spend $7.5-8.0 billion USD on content in 2018.

Revenue for the quarter jumped almost 33 per cent to $3.29 billion USD year over year, with net income of $186 million.

The company said in its Q4 earnings letter, in just five years after launching their first original series, Netflix had three of the top five most searched TV shows globally, for two years running, according to Google Trends data.

Netflix also detailed its streaming completion, noting Amazon Prime Video and also mentioning Apple “growing its programming”, which the company suspects will be bundled with Apple Music or iOS.

“We’re growing faster than we expected, which allows us to invest more in original content than we had planned,” said the company in its letter to shareholders. “Given our track record of content investments helping to increase growth, we are excited about the growth in future years from the increased investments we are making in original content this year.”

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