“We are entering 2024 at a great time.” Netflix’s optimism for the year that has begun is hard to hide. This Tuesday, the streaming giant presented the results for the last quarter of 2023, in which 13.1 million subscribers were added to the service worldwide. The figure is well above the nine million that the company itself had forecast for this period and is consolidated at 260.2 million subscribers. The figures caused the share price to rise 7% after the market closed.
The company achieved record sales at the end of last year. In this area too, Netflix exceeded Wall Street's expectations. The company reported a profit of $8.83 billion, while analysts had estimated around $8.7 billion. The amount is 12.5% higher than the sales achieved in the last quarter of 2022. The key to growth was the decision to increase prices and monetization, which was possible, among other things, by eliminating password sharing with the ability for users to add and transfer profiles in their accounts.
Advertising is increasingly becoming an important factor in the company's numbers, which is celebrating its anniversary with two executives sharing the position of CEO (Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos). Four out of ten new users have joined the service, which allows advertising in programming. This model has generated 23 million unique monthly users. In November there were eight million.
“Scaling the advertising business represents an opportunity to generate new sales and profits in the medium and long term,” said the company. “The number of members enabling ads increased by nearly 70% between quarters,” they add. The company has announced that this model will replace the basic subscription, which will expire in the second quarter of this year in the Canadian and UK markets.
The company is forecasting a solid first quarter of 2024. Netflix expects earnings to rise 13% during this 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 investors that 2024 will be a year of “opportunity.” Netflix is the leader in the streaming market, although the company admits that it lags behind YouTube in terms of the number of hours watched. Thanks to 18,000 titles in their catalog, they reached 100,000 million hours of playback in the first half of 2023. The most viewed films on the platform included the thriller Leave the World Behind by Julia Roberts with 134.2 million views, the animated film Leo, which was voiced by Adam Sandler (108 million), and Rebel Moon by Zack Snyder (74. 6 million). Million). Also notable is the large audience reached by Berlin, the prequel to La Casa de Papel, and the season finales of Sex Education and The Crown, which left 45.7 and 30 million views, respectively.
Live events
The company decided to experiment this year. To achieve this, she wants to double her commitment to live events. “This allows us to understand what audiences value most and how we can turn those moments into events,” the company notes in its document. Netflix entered this path last March with a comedy special in which Chris Rock discussed the beating he suffered on Oscar night a year earlier.
This Tuesday, Netflix accompanied the results presentation with news. From January 2025, viewers in North America, the UK and Latin America will find American wrestling's weekly star show exclusively on the Raw service. “This represents the biggest programming change in broadcast history and departs linear television for the first time since its inception 31 years ago,” the tech giant said in a statement. The agreement, which was described as “long-term” although it was not specified how many years it will last, will allow the digital network to broadcast WWE content exclusively in various international markets.
This year, Netflix has 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 3rd, is called Netflix Slam. It will generate strong interest in Spain, the fifth most important market for the company.
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