Netflix’s Q1 is ‘coming along nicely,’ with results ‘about where ...
Netflix’s Q1 is “coming along nicely,” with results “about where we expected” or “a bit stronger,” Chief Financial Officer Barry McCarthy told the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco Monday. He expressed confidence the company is “going to…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
land within the range” it forecast early this year and said results are “looking pretty good on the bottom line as well.” The mostly strong results Netflix reported for Q4 have continued into 2009, he said. The company ended Q4 with subscribers increasing to 9.4 million from 7.5 million a year earlier and from 8.7 million in Q3. Revenue increased 19 percent from Q4 to $359.6 million and profit increased to $22.7 million from $15.7 million. But churn increased to 4.2 percent from 4.1 percent. Churn “probably” would have been 4.1 percent “in a better economic environment,” McCarthy said. Netflix continues to be pleased with results for its streaming services, including the relationship it has with Microsoft allowing Netflix movies to be streamed through the Xbox 360, McCarthy said. “Most” of the subscribers who stream movies through the 360 and other set-top boxes also continue to be “actively engaged” in DVD rentals from Netflix, he said. But he said it was “too soon” to gauge how that will pan out as streaming becomes more ubiquitous, noting most of the subscribers now streaming movies are early adopters. The 1 million people that Netflix and Microsoft said last month were streaming movies from the rental service through the Xbox 360 included a “combination of new and existing customers,” McCarthy said. Netflix continues to ready a streaming-only subscription tier for its members. Earlier Monday, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes told the Deutsche Bank Media & Telecom Conference in Palm Beach, Fla., that his company had no concerns about Netflix’s streaming-only plan: “I think it’s fine.” Bewkes also said he had no concern about streaming impacting the pricing that his company wants to set for movies. “There’s a real vibrancy to the sales behavior in the new channels of distribution,” he said. The percentage of streamed movies sold versus rented is about the same as packaged product, he said. As examples, he said consumers streaming Warner’s The Dark Knight bought it 94 percent of the time, versus 80 percent or so for Sex and the City and 68 percent for The Bucket List.