Netflix Posts Q2 Results, Adds 10 Million New Subscribers

Netflix says that it did great during April, May, and June of this year — because people were stuck at home around the world, waiting out the Covid-19 pandemic.

The figures for the quarter showed that Netflix added just over 10m new paid subscribers, which was substantially more than the 8.07m that analyst firm Refinitiv had predicted. This helped push Netflix revenues up by almost a quarter to $6.15 billion USD in Q2, surpassing estimates of $6.08bn.

Netflix also announced a number of new management changes to the company, with chief content officer Ted Sarandos being named co-CEO along with Reed Hastings, while Greg Peters will be taking on both the roles of chief operating officer and chief product officer.

In a blog post, Hastings said he does not expect much to change in the day-to-day running of the company, emphasising that he is “committed to Netflix for the long term” but the decision is part of the “long process of succession planning.”

Netflix also said that following Covid-19, production on some of its biggest titles will likely be pushed out towards the end of 2021, but that “the total number of originals for the full year will still be higher than 2020.” It added that pauses in production are impacting its competitors and suppliers in the same way and so the company believes its customer satisfaction will “remain high.”

For now, the streamer has been able to resume production in the Asia-Pacific and some production in Europe, and it never completely shut down in Korea, it said. Productions in India and some of Latin America have not resumed yet. Four U.S.-based productions are filming, including two stop-motion animation films in Oregon and two movies in California. Netflix did warn, though, that “current infection trends create more uncertainty for our productions in the U.S.”

Looking ahead to next quarter, Netflix expects to earn $6.33 billion USD, with earnings per share of $2.09. It anticipates adding 2.5 million new subscribers.