Streaming giant, Netflix revenue increased 19% year over year to $7.3 billion, while operating income rose 36% year over year to $1.8 Billion in Q2. Netflix finished the quarter with over 209m paid memberships, slightly ahead of its forecast.
The streaming giant added 1.5m paid memberships in Q2, slightly ahead of the 1.0m guidance forecast. The Asia-Pacific (APAC) region represented about two-thirds of our global paid net adds in the quarter.
The pandemic (COVID-19) created some lumpiness in the company’s membership growth (higher growth in 2020, slower growth this year), which is working its way through. The company is forecasting 3.5 million net subscriber adds in the 3rd quarter of 2021.
Netflix has had a rough 2021 so far in terms of subscriber growth. In Q1 2021, it added only 4 million subscribers, below the 6 million it had forecast (it added 15.8 million in the same quarter a year earlier).
Netflix’s revenue growth was driven by an 11% increase in average paid streaming memberships and 8% growth in average revenue per membership (ARM). ARM rose 4%, excluding a foreign exchange (FX) impact of +$277m.
The operating margin of 25.2% expanded 3 percentage points compared with the year-ago quarter. EPS of $2.97 vs. $1.59 a year ago included a $63m non-cash unrealized loss from FX remeasurement on our Euro-denominated debt.
Netflix recently expanded its low-cost mobile-only plan to an additional 78 countries across South East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Netflix sees the launch of the mobile-only plan as an effective way to introduce more consumers to Netflix while being roughly revenue-neutral as the lower average revenue per membership is offset by incremental acquisition and generally better retention.
