In an unusual move, Netflix confirmed that it will stop providing quarterly subscriber numbers next year. Subscribers are an important metric in streaming, as they typically are a good indicator of how a service is doing. In Netflix’s case, it would seem the company no longer places as much importance on this particular metric.
Netflix reported its latest quarterly results today, confirming 269.6 million subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2024, an increase of 9.3 million on the previous quarter. In the accompanying shareholders letter, the company made clear its intention to stop reporting these figures each quarter, beginning with its Q1 2025 earnings.
While Netflix acknowledged that “membership growth was a strong indicator” during its early days, the company explained that it is now far more “focused on revenue and operating margin as our primary financial metrics — and engagement (i.e. time spent) as our best proxy for customer satisfaction.”
Due to its multi-tier approach, ad-supported plan, and extra member feature, Netflix is basically arguing that the actual subscriber number and the revenue generated during an individual quarter no longer correlate as clearly as they once did. With this in mind, the company no longer sees as much point in providing updates on the number of subscribers each quarter.
To be clear, Netflix isn’t completely stropping the reporting of subscribers altogether, as the company said it will continue to “announce major subscriber milestones as we cross them.” However, considering Netflix closed out the most recent quarter with almost 270 million global subscribers, it remains unclear whether Netflix considers “a major milestone” to be tens of millions or whether we’ll have to wait until the service hits the next 100 million to find out.
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