1. Steady growth. Overall, Netflix’ revenue is growing steadily. That’s mostly thanks to the company’s password-sharing crackdown. It helped the company gain 5.9 million subscribers in the last quarter while losing only 1 million. Netflix doubled the share of subscribers in the ad-supported tier, albeit from a small base, from not quite 2% to a little more than 3% of subscribers.
2. Committed to find deal with strikers. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the writers’ and actor’s strike is not the outcome the company had wished for and said they were “super committed” to reach an agreement. But he also said that Netflix had enough content to make it through the strike. The strike has been going on for more than two months now.
3. Ad-funded subs make more money. The company notably made no remarks about its advertising business, except that it is “working hard to scale it”. But it is probably fair to say that advertising is not a significant money-maker for the company – yet. Nevertheless, there seems to be a push to direct more users toward the ad-supported $6.99-a-month offer because they make more revenue for the company than those in the ad-free subscription offer.
4. Ad-free gets more expensive. How much more economical the ad-funded plan is, one can tell from the fact that Netflix discontinued the $9.99 ad-free subscription plan, which is now $15.49 for new members. Subscribers’ existing $9.99 plans are grandfathered in until they change their plan or cancel and re-subscribe later.
5. Slight miss – stock down. Even though Netflix’ overall performance was up, because the company slightly missed its revenue forecast, its stock price was down 8% today.
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