Despite increasing competition in the online media streaming segment and addition of new players in the market — Disney+ and Apple TV+, Netflix is showing no signs of slowdown and keeps on growing its subscribers.
In its latest earnings report, the streaming giant has announced that its subscribers count grew by 8.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2019. The numbers are well ahead of the company’s forecast of 7.6 million.
It has added 420,000 customers in the United States and 8.33 million overseas in the year-end quarter of 2019. With this, Netflix now has 167 million paid subscribers worldwide, with over 100 million of them being outside of the United States.
The company has also reported stronger-than-expected financials. It reported revenue of $5.47 billion and earnings per share of $1.30. Analysts on average had expected $5.45 billion in revenue and EPS of 53 cents.
In a letter to shareholders, Netflix wrote that “despite the big debut of Disney+ and the launch of Apple TV+, our viewing per membership grew both globally and in the US on a year over year basis, consistent with recent quarters.”
To show that the company is still flourishing in the face of increased competition, it added Google search trends for “The Witcher” and compared it with shows from other platforms like “The Mandalorian” from Disney, “The Morning Show” from Apple, and “Jack Ryan” from Amazon.
But this may be an unfair comparison given that Disney+ is available only in the U.S., New Zealand, Canada and Australia while Jack Ryan from Amazon is not a new show as it is already in its second season.
It remains to be seen how the increasing competition affects Netflix. While Disney+ and Apple TV+ have just debuted, NBCUniversal’s Peacock and AT&T’s HBO Max are slated to go live later this year. Netflix has spent around $15 billion on original film and TV content in 2019 as the company is battling against new streaming platforms.
