Netflix has reached 232.5 million subscribers during the first quarter of 2023, 4.9% more than in the same period last year, despite having implemented a policy to control the use of shared accounts between users.
This is the largest number of subscribers in the company’s history, which reached revenues of 8,162 million dollars (7,438 million euros at today’s exchange rates), an increase of 3.7% compared to the first quarter of the previous year.
Likewise, the net profit at the beginning of 2023 was 1,305 million dollars compared to the 55 million that the company pocketed in the period that ended 2022.
The results were highly anticipated by investors because they represented the first balance sheet of the company after restricting shared accountsextend to more countries its model of ad-supported subscription and at a reduced price, and following the resignation of confounder Reed Hastings as CEO.
For its part, the number of new subscribers in this quarter amounted to 1.75 million usersa growth far from that experienced at the end of 2022, when the platform incorporated more than 7.6 million subscribers.
However, despite the slowdown in growth, partly due to stiff competition from other platforms such as Prime Video and Disney+ In an already saturated market, Netflix continued to expand.
In fact, subscriptions in the United States and Canada increased by 8% compared to the same period of the previous year and in Latin America they did so by 7%, establishing the region as one of the main niches of the platform.
They celebrate the “good results” of the plan with publicity
In a letter to its shareholders, the “streaming” service reported that “the year started well” because they continue to be “leaders”, but that they continue to work with the “objective” of continuing to attract “great creators” to “build a business of success”.
All this in a context in which one of the main unknowns was knowing how the public would accept the ban on shared accounts and the new model with advertising, and reduced in price, which Netflix said has brought “good results”. “Given the current good results, especially in the United States, we are improving our advertising experience with a best video quality to attract a greater number of consumers”, the company has indicated in the letter.
This format, which was tested in various Latin American countries, debuted in December with an average cost of $7 in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Shortly after, it would reach other markets in Latin America, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, where the company decided to reduce the prices of its plans in order to maintain the increase in subscribers.
With more than 232.5 million subscribers, Netflix is the leading streaming service in the world, followed by Prime Video, with 200 million, and Disney with approximately 165 million across all its platforms: Disney+, Hulu, Star and ESPN+. .
