LOS GATOS, CA (CelebrityAccess) — On Tuesday, video streaming service Netflix announced its revenue topped $4.5bn for the first fiscal quarter of 2019, up by 22% from the previous year.
According to Netflix’s financial filings, revenue for the quarter came in at $4.52bn compared to $3.7bn for the first quarter of 2018. Netflix reported net income of $344 million, up from $290m in 2018.
The growth in revenue was driven by paid memberships, which increased 26% year over year, though the average revenue per user slipped by 2% from last year, which the company attributed to “currency headwinds.”
Paid net adds, or the number of new users adjusted for users who declined to renew in Q1 were 9.6 million (with 1.74m in the US and 7.86m internationally), up 16% year over year, representing a new quarterly record for the streamer.
As well, Netflix is predicting total paid net adds of 5.0m for the next quarter, with growth hindered by increased prices for the service. In total, Netflix envisions 14.6m paid net adds for the first half of 2019, up 7% year over year, the company said.
However, Netflix is facing an increasingly crowded market in videos streaming. Competitors such as Disney, which owns the popular Marvel cinematic universe, is pulling stakes from Netflix as it prepares to launch its own streaming service later this year. Apple also announced plans to launch a branded streaming service with original content later this year.
Despite the encroaching competition, Netflix was upbeat, and noted that: “We don’t anticipate that these new entrants will materially affect our growth because the transition from linear to on demand entertainment is so massive and because of the differing nature of our content offerings. We believe we’ll all continue to grow as we each invest more in content and improve our service and as consumers continue to migrate away from linear viewing (similar to how US cable networks collectively grew for years as viewing shifted from broadcast networks during the 1980s and 1990s).”
