In recent news, the well-known streaming giant Netflix announced its first-quarter data, revealing an addition of 9.33 million subscription users in the first quarter of 2024. This figure doubled the market's general expectation of 4.84 million, with Netflix expanding to multiple countries and regions globally, especially in the North American territories of the United States and Canada.
This year, Netflix has seen its best development in recent years, thanks to the launch of a large number of original programs and the crackdown on the widespread use of shared accounts, it gained twice the number of new subscribers than expected. However, this surge is clearly not sustainable. With the shared account issue largely resolved, it would be difficult to attract such a large number of new users in the short term again. Therefore, Netflix has decided to stop reporting the number of subscription users from the next year.
For a long time, the number of subscription users and the average expenditure per user have been the main ways and indicators for Wall Street to assess the company. However, Netflix's decision to conceal this data and instead publish traditional indicators such as sales and profits is not widely seen as positive, especially considering Netflix's long-term decline prior to this.
The significant increase in data is largely due to Netflix's strict crackdown on account sharing. The use of the same account by multiple people undoubtedly reduces its receivables. Netflix estimates that more than 100 million people are using accounts for free, and although this figure may be exaggerated, the phenomenon undoubtedly exists widely.
Although many were concerned about potential strong opposition from the market, especially from existing users, when deciding to crack down on account sharing, Netflix persisted with the policy and has seen results, with millions opting not to share accounts and instead pay for their own use.
How many new accounts can be added in the future is still unknown. Based on market share, Netflix accounts for 8% of U.S. television viewership, and based on their internal data, they believe their audience exceeds 500 million people. Therefore, cracking down on account sharing is undoubtedly profitable, but the resistance to this policy is also significant.
The recent surge in profits lifted Netflix's stock price to a new all-time high, pushing the company's market value over $260 billion. However, analysts predict that this policy will not be sustainable in the long term, but Netflix has refused to comment on this issue.
