Netflix had a mostly solid second quarter of 2023 in terms of its financial situation. The premium streaming service announced today that it added 5.89 million new subscribers in the last quarter. That number is over twice what financial analysts had predicted for the company.
In its letter to shareholders, Netflix now says it has a total of 238.39 million paid subscribers worldwide. Revenues were $8.2 billion for the second quarter and operating profit came in at $1.8 billion, both of which were within the company’s previous expectations.
Part of that increase in revenue was due to Netflix’s launch of its password-sharing fee. It launched in the US and other parts of the world in late May. It’s now been put in place in over 100 countries, and Netflix says it will start rolling out to nearly all of the remaining markets starting today.
In November 2022, Netflix launched its cheaper ad-based plan for subscribers. Today, it quietly shut down its cheapest ad-free plan in the US and UK after doing the same in Canada. In today’s financial report, Netflix stated:
We believe our entry prices in these countries – $6.99 in the US, £4.99 in the UK, and $5.99 in Canada – provide great value to consumers given the breadth and quality of our catalog.
Netflix is also trying to expand beyond the streaming of TV shows and movies by becoming a mobile game publisher. It’s also developing a new, and so far unrevealed, AAA PC-console game in a new in-house development studio.
Some more recent developments at the company include the beginning of adding classic TV shows from HBO to its lineup, and there are rumors it is going to finally start offering live stream sports events, beginning with a celebrity-focused golf tournament. Sadly, Netflix will be shutting down its DVD and Blu-Ray mail rental disk service, which got the company its start, on September 29.
