Netflix added 9.33 million subscribers worldwide in the first quarter of 2024, which represents 16% growth in a year to just short of 270 million, with a claimed audience of over half a billion people. Quarterly operating income was $2.6 billion, up 54% on the same period the previous year. From 2025, when it could have 300 million subscribers worldwide, Netflix will no longer report quarterly subscriber numbers or average revenue, preferring to focus on revenue and free cash flow.
Netflix now has 269.60 million subscribers, or members as it prefers to call them. It added 2.53 million in the United States and Canada, to reach 82.66 million, with an average monthly revenue of $17.30. In the EMEA region there were 2.92 million additions to a total of 91.73 million, while in the LATAM there were 1.72 million additions for a total of 47.72 million, and in APAC the gain was 2.16 million and a total of 47.50 million.
The company no longer provides a forecast of its subscriber numbers, although it did concede that the gains in the second quarter of 2024 were unlikely to be as high as in the first.
There is still no sign of subscriber growth levelling off, even in the saturated market of North America, where Netflix added 5.83 million subscribers in 2023. Netflix is the market leader, although Amazon has announced that it has more than 200 million monthly viewers to its Prime Video service. Disney+ has 111 million subscribers, excluding another 38 million on Hotstar.
Noting that it would not report quarterly subscriber numbers from 2025, Netflix explained: “In our early days, when we had little revenue or profit, membership growth was a strong indicator of our future potential. But now we’re generating very substantial profit and free cash flow.”
“We’re not going to be silent on members as well, Greg Peters, the president and co-chief executive told analysts. “We’ll periodically update when we grow and we hit certain major milestones, we’ll announce those. It’s just not going to be part of our regular reporting.”
Netflix produced $2.14 billion in free cash flow in the first quarter, its highest quarterly cash generation to date. It is forecasting around $6 billion in free cash flow in 2024, although it still has over $13 billion in long-term debt.
Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive, said that Netflix is in the very early days of developing its live programming. “On-demand streaming have been unbelievable for consumer choice and control, and it’s really put the controls of television back in the hands of consumers, which has been really phenomenal. But there’s also something incredibly magic about folks gathering around the TV together in the living room to watch something all at the same time. We believe that these kind of eventized cultural moments, like the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson Fight, are just that kind of television that we want to be part of winning over those moments with our members as well.”
There’s nothing quite like the shared family experience of a good fight. “It’s an opportunity for us to expand our advertising offering and give those brands access to these kind of culture-defining moments,” added his co-chief executive Greg Peters, without irony.