Netflix grows subscribers and bets on live events | Economy

“We enter 2024 at a fantastic time.” Netflix’s optimism for the year it has started is hard to hide. This Tuesday, the streaming giant presented its results for the last quarter of 2023, in which 13.1 million subscribers were added to the service worldwide. The figure far exceeds the nine million that the company itself had forecast for the period and is consolidated with 260.2 million subscribers. The numbers boosted the stock price by 7% after the stock market closed.

The company achieved record revenue at the end of last year. In this area too, Netflix has exceeded what Wall Street expected. The company reported earnings of $8.83 billion, while analysts had estimated about $8.7 billion. The amount is 12.5% ​​higher than the revenues achieved in the last quarter of 2022. The key to the growth was the decision to increase prices and monetization, which was possible, in part, by eliminating shared passwords with the possibility for users to add and transfer profiles into their accounts.

Advertising is starting to become an important factor in the company’s numbers, which is celebrating one year with two executives sharing the CEO position (Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos). Four out of ten new users have joined the service which allows advertising in programming. This model generated 23 million monthly unique users. In November there were eight million.

“The expansion of the advertising business represents an opportunity to drive new revenue and profits in the medium to long term,” the company says. “Ad-enabling subscriptions grew nearly 70% between quarters,” they add. The company announced that this model will replace the basic subscription, which will begin to phase out in the second quarter of this year in the Canadian and UK markets.

The company expects a solid first quarter of 2024. Netflix estimates a 13% increase in earnings for the period. The increase in financial forecasts increased by 3%, partly due to the collapse of the exchange rate of the Argentine peso against the dollar.

The company tells its investors that 2024 is a year of “opportunity.” Netflix is ​​the leader in the streaming market, although it admits to being behind YouTube in terms of hours watched. They reached 100,000 million hours of playback in the first half of 2023, thanks to 18,000 titles in their catalog. The most viewed films on the platform were, among others, Julia Roberts’ thriller Leave the World Behind, with 134.2 million views, the animated film Leo, where Adam Sandler lent his voice (108 million) and Rebel Moon, by Zack Snyder (74.6 million). Also noteworthy is the large audience obtained by Berlin, the prequel to La Casa de Papel, and by the season finales of Sex Education and The Crown, which recorded 45.7 and 30 million views respectively.

Live events

The company decided to experiment this year. To achieve this goal it intends to double its commitment to live events. “This will allow us to understand what audiences value most and how we can turn these moments into events,” the company notes in its document. Netflix embarked on this path in March last year with a comedy special in which Chris Rock spoke about the blow he received a year earlier on Oscar night.

This Tuesday Netflix accompanied the presentation of the results with some news. From January 2025, viewers in North America, the United Kingdom and Latin America will find the weekly show from American wrestling stars exclusively on the Raw service. “This is the largest programming change in the history of broadcasting, abandoning linear television for the first time since its inception 31 years ago,” read a statement from the tech giant. The deal, which was described as “long-term,” although it did not specify how many years, will allow the digital network to broadcast WWE content exclusively in various international markets.

For this year, Netflix also organized a friendly match in Las Vegas between two Spanish tennis stars, Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz. The event, which will take place on March 3, has been called Netflix Slam. It will generate great interest in Spain, the fifth most important market for the company.

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2024-01-24 00:00:10
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