Netflix: Facts and Statistics

Annual revenue is the total amount of money a company earns from business operations in a year before any deductions for returns, the cost of goods it sold, and expenses.

Netflix’s annual revenue for 2023 was $33.72 billion, which constituted a growth of 6.7% from the previous year. Its annual revenue for 2022 amounted to $31.61 billion, a similar 6.5% increase from 2021. Netflix’s highest quarterly revenue was in the fourth quarter of 2023, reaching $8.83 billion. As Netflix has approximately 13,000 full time employees, the revenue-per-employee ratio is $2,593,846.. The upward trajectory of the company’s annual revenue over the years is reflected in the table below:

Netflix reported its 2024 third-quarter earnings on Thursday, October 17, with EPS of $5.40, $0.28 better than the analyst estimate of $5.12. Revenue for the quarter came in at $9.82B versus the consensus estimate of $9.77B.

“It’s a phenomenal report from the streaming giant that kicks off earnings season for big tech on the front foot. Subscriber growth, profit margins, and EPS growth seem, at this point, all aligned toward a huge growth avenue that should keep propelling the company well into 2025,” said Thomas Monteiro, senior analyst at Investing.com. “With strong tailwinds for the ad business both in the macro and the internal fronts ahead, particularly as the company gains space in the highly disputed live sports business, it’s very likely that we will see profit margins increase even further going ahead. When adding this perspective to the current numbers, Netflix’s lofty 37X valuation starts to make a lot of sense in the mid-term, particularly as we see lots of room for price increases in the ad-tier service. The same can be said for the ads part of the revenue, which should gain further traction in light of improving borrowing costs.

“That should also gain further traction as interaction figures begin to improve from the current plateau once the deviance caused by the password crackdown initiative begins to fade. On top of that, the company continues to show fantastic operating cash flow and free cash flow numbers, which, in the fast-growing tech environment we project for 2025, can make all the difference when it comes to making fast changes to stay ahead of the competition both in terms of content creation and business-wise,” he continued. “As the company transitions away from subscriber growth as its primary success metric, margins should be the go-to word investors will focus on. Against this backdrop, the company may be able to afford to scale the price even further than expected if needed.”

Netflix’s global average monthly revenue per paying user (ARPU) is $16.64. Since 2017, there has been a sharp growth of 76.45%.

Below is the table showing Netflix’s average monthly revenue per membership from 2017:

Annual revenue growth refers to an increase in revenue over a year. It is the rate of increase in total revenues divided by total revenues from the same period in the previous year. Revenue growth can be measured as a percent increase from a starting point.

The table below shows Netflix’s annual revenue growth from 2009 to 2023:

A company’s net income is defined as its net profit or loss after all revenues, income items, and expenses have been taken into account.

Netflix’s net income for the quarter ending on December 31, 2023, was $937.8 million, constituting a stellar growth of almost 1,600% year-over-year. Netflix’s net income for the twelve months ending December 31, 2023, was $5.408 billion, a 20.4% jump on a year-over-year (YoY) basis. Netflix’s annual net income for 2022 was $4.492B, which is a 12.2% drop from 2021.

How much Netflix earned in other years can be seen in the following table:

Earnings per share (EPS) are defined as a company’s net earnings or losses attributable to common shareholders per diluted share base, which includes all convertible securities and debt, options, and warrants.

Netflix’s diluted EPS for the quarter ending December 31, 2023, was $2.11, which constitutes a breathtaking jump of over 1,650% year-over-year. Netflix’s 2023 annual EPS was $12.03, pointing to a 20.9% jump from the figure in 2022. Netflix’s 2022 annual EPS was $9.95, which amounts to a 11.5% fall from 2021. Their 2021 annual EPS was $11.24, a whopping 84.86% increase from 2020.

For the historical changes in the company’s earnings per share, consult the table below:

A company’s operating income is defined as income after operating expenses have been deducted and before interest payments and taxes have been deducted.

Netflix’s operating income for the quarter ending December 31, 2023, was $1.244 billion versus $154.6 million in the same period last year. Netflix’s annual operating income for 2023 was $6.661 billion, a 12.6% rise from 2022. Netflix’s annual operating income for 2022 was $5.633 billion, a 9.07% drop from 2021. Its annual operating income for 2021 was $6.195 billion, amounting to a healthy 35.1% uptick from 2020.

As viewers gladly watch Netflix’s original content, the company invests in it large amounts of money to provide a diverse range of series.

Netflix spent $13 billion on original shows in 2023. This is a decrease from the previous year when Netflix invested $16.84 billion in content. The company plans to increase its spending on content to almost $17 billion in 2024. Consult the table below to see how much Netflix has invested in original content over the years:

The table below presents the most popular Netflix original movies, whose popularity is measured by the hours spent watching them globally in the first twenty-eight days of release:

Since the year of the company’s inception, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings has been focused solely and exclusively on how to lure more subscribers to its streaming services. He brushed away advice to introduce advertising, embrace movie theaters, or purchase a rival studio.

Netflix put all its resources into creating original programming for the internet. The company’s single-minded focus on original content designed to increase subscribers paid off: Netflix is considered by far the most popular TV network in the world.

What has negatively influenced the number of Netflix subscribers is the price of its streaming services. In April, May, and June of 2023 Netflix added 5.9 million new subscribers. This is almost three times as many as analysts expected after Netflix clamped down on households that were password sharing.

The table below contains changing numbers of the company’s subscribers worldwide:

Netflix has been facing cutthroat competition from other companies streaming content online, though it still retains the leading position – 44.21% of the market share at the beginning of 2023. 

Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global, and NBCUniversal use their profits from cable networks to improve streaming services that collectively lose billions of dollars a year. But as they offer cheaper packages, many customers defect to them from Netflix. Netflix’s goal should be to prevent the defection of its customers to its rivals.

There are also newer competitors such HBOMax and PeacockTV that pose a threat to Netflix. Both continue to grow in 2023, with market shares of 10.31% and 8.08%, respectively. It seems that these relatively newer entrants to the market are successfully gaining traction and attracting subscribers.

Hulu has also increased its market share by 3.37% year over year, boasting 21.18% in the first quarter of 2023.

As Netflix’s market share declined by 5.56% year over year in the same quarter, it should start considering Hulu as a force that should be reckoned with in the market. In terms of subscribers, the arch-competitor of Netflix is Amazon Prime, as the table below demonstrates:

The penetration rate is the percentage of the relevant total population that has purchased a Netflix subscription at least once.

Netflix has the highest penetration rate in Australia – 65%. The United Kingdom and the United States follow with a penetration rate of 57% and 53% respectively. Although Netflix’s largest market is the United States, it enjoys only the third position in terms of penetration.

Consult the table below to see how other countries are devoted to Netflix:

Netflix can be watched from all corners of the world. Yet its products are not distributed equally across the globe, though the company does not discriminate out of spite. The problem is that each country has a different set of laws that apply to licensing of content. When Netflix selects content, it does this in keeping with the laws of the particular country where it intends to stream its movies and shows. In other words, it is not Netflix but rather the countries that set up restrictions on the content their people watch. Netflix can do nothing but respect the licensing laws of its customers. This results in an uneven distribution of shows and movies.

In 2023, Netflix’s largest library is presently in Slovakia, counting 8,427 titles. Bulgaria comes second, with 8,272 titles. The table below shows how unevenly Netflix’s content is delivered to different countries:

• 1997 – Netflix was founded by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings. The company was conceived as an online movie rental. However uncomplicated it may seem now, the idea that set the company’s business in motion was decisively ground-breaking in those times. Back then, having implemented a subscription-based business model, Netflix started delivering DVDs to people’s houses via the US Postal Service.
  
• 1998 – To attract viewers’ attention to the movies they could order, Netflix created its online catalog. It contained 925 titles available through a traditional pay-per-rental model. The advantage of the web catalog of films was immediately clear: regardless of their physical location, viewers could order any movie existing in Netflix’s library.
  
• 1999 – The company launched its monthly subscription concept.
  
• 2000 – Netflix tried to talk to Blockbuster, offering itself for acquisition for $50 million. The latter declined the offer. The same year, Netflix founded Redbox, which offered DVDs via automated retail kiosks.
  
• 2002 – Netflix went public, selling 5.5 million shares of common stock at the price of $15 per share.
  
• 2003 – The company celebrated 1 million subscribers in April.
  
• 2007 – Netflix announced that it would launch streaming video. These new services became known as a Watch Now program. Targeted at power users with broadband internet connections, the program required them to have a 1mbps internet connection to watch films and a 3mbps internet connection to stream DVD-quality movies. For less than twenty dollars, viewers could access 18 hours of streaming content, receiving it through a browser applet that they needed to install in advance.
  
• 2008 – In August, Netflix suffered massive database corruption. In an attempt to protect its data, the company decided to move it to the Amazon Web Services cloud.
  
• 2009 – The company launched Netflix Originals. These shows are called Originals because Netflix owns the copyright to them, not necessarily because they created them!
  
• 2010 – Netflix began expanding its streaming services to international markets, starting with Canada. Afterward, it conquered Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador.
  
• 2011 – Netflix experienced its first major setback: as 800,000 subscribers terminated their contracts with the company, its stock tumbled to $9.12 per share from $42.16 per share.
  
• 2012 – Despite this blow, the company began its conquest of Europe, launching its services in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and later in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
  
• 2013 – Netflix launched House of Cards, its first originally-created content, which later won both Emmy and Golden Globe awards. Netflix Originals liberated the company from its dependence on various movie and television studios and gave it leverage over its supply chain of content providers. House of Cards was destined to continue for 6 seasons and generated not only a loyal audience but also imitators of Netflix’s daring idea. Amazon Prime Instant Video and Hotstar immediately followed suit and began their original series in the hope of recapturing Netflix’s resounding success.
  
• 2015 – Netflix announced a 7:1 stock split in the form of a dividend of six additional shares for each outstanding share. It also said that trading at the post-split price would start on the 15^th of July.
  
• 2015 – Several months later, Netflix’s stock surged to an all-time high –nearly $100 per share. This was a staggering growth of 574% over the past five years.
  
• 2015 – In October, the company decided to hike the price of its standard HD plan to $10 per month, from $9 per month.
  
• 2016 – Netflix embarked on a major international expansion into 130 countries. Since then, Netflix has been available to customers worldwide, except a few countries such as China, North Korea, Syria, and Crimea, which is now part of Russia.
  
• 2016 – Netflix partnered with Univision to broadcast the first season of its original show Narcos. The company also rolled out an offline playback feature to all of its subscribers worldwide.
  
• 2017 – The number of Netflix subscribers became equal to the number of combined cable subscribers. Over 73% of American households enjoyed Netflix.
  
• 2021 – In November, Netflix presented its customers with the gaming platform, Netflix Games. There were initially five games available on Android, with the plan to move Netflix’s gaming service to iOS later.
  
• 2022 – Netflix pushed its prices up again and lost 1,000,000 customers. Later in the year, Netflix acquired Boss Fight Entertainment, a mobile games developer.
  
• 2022 – Netflix was hailed with twenty-seven Oscar nominations, twelve of which went to The Power of the Dog.
  
• 2023 – Hastings stepped down as the company’s CEO, becoming an executive chairman. His net worth at the end of July 2023 amounted to $4.1 billion, in Forbes’s estimation. In April, Netflix announced the closing down of DVD.com, saying that the last shipment would be at the end of September 2023.
  
• 2023 – Netflix began its controversial crackdown on password sharing in the United States. The idea behind this policy is to gain more subscribers. Netflix wants that only users who are part of a “Netflix Household” – those who are using the same internet connection – will be able to access the account. Paid additional users can also join, provided they are added to a Standard or Premium plan. Those who are borrowing a Netflix password will get a message when they try to log in telling them that they need to start their own account.

• Even though 2022 was a tough year for the company, Netflix had around 220 million global paid memberships in the second quarter, retaining the position of the largest video-on-demand service in the world. In the same quarter, Hulu, Netflix’s competitor, boasted only 45.6 million subscribers. Disney+ accounted for 44 million customers.
  
• According to research from Ampere, approximately four-fifths of Americans aged 18 to 34 are either Netflix subscribers or enjoy access to the service through their families or shared passwords.
  
• In 2022, over 40% of users watched Netflix content without paying, helped by password and account sharing.
  
• Netflix became one of the first streaming services available as an app on different devices. The company moved beyond web browsers in 2008, partnering with companies to stream on Xbox 360, Blu-ray disc players, and TV set-top boxes.
  
• After airing House of Cards, Netflix produced over 1,500 originals, including such popular pieces as Money Heist, The Queen’s Gambit, and Stranger Things.
  
• One of the most popular Netflix originals so far has been Squid Game. This show was sampled by 111 million accounts and has been streamed for 1.65 billion hours collectively. This amounts to 188,356 years of watching.
  
• Netflix has won numerous nominations for its original content. It received 160 Emmy nominations in 2020, which is almost double the number of nominations it received in 2017.
  
• In the first year of the pandemic, Netflix won forty-three awards. The year after proved even more celebratory. The company got forty-four awards and set the record for most victories in a single year, outclassing CBS which had held this record since 1974.
  
• In 2019, Netflix viewers spent a combined 164 million hours per day watching movies or shows.
  
• In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Netflix users watched 3.2 hours of video per day on average, which amounted to 6 billion collective hours per month.
  
• In 2021, the most popular Netflix movie was Clueless, while the most popular TV series proved to be 13 Reasons Why.
  
• Netflix gained an additional 15.77 million subscribers in Q1 2020 (largely thanks to the global lockdown). Netflix even had to reduce streaming quality in several countries to go easier on overloaded bandwidth.
  
• Thanks to the increase in subscribers in 2020, Netflix reported total net revenue of close to $29.7 billion per year in 2021. Because in 2017, the company’s revenue was $11.69 billion, it jumped by 87% between 2017 and 2021.
  
• From 2007, when Netflix introduced its digital on-demand streaming option, to 2021, Netflix’s revenue skyrocketed by 2400%.
  
• Netflix conducts extensive research, spending $2.2 billion on it in 2021 alone. Its investment in research has grown over the years: in 2021, the streaming giant spent 18% more on research than in the previous year. In 2017, it invested only $953.7 million in research and development.
  
• Netflix earned over $200 million in 2021 from its DVD rental services.
  
• Before the release of Disney+, Netflix paid $300 million to stream Disney’s content.
  
• Netflix reported a negative free cash flow of $3.3 billion in 2019. A year later, it improved, witnessing a positive free cash flow of $1.9 billion in 2020.
  
• The company held $18.8 billion in debt in 2021.
  
• At the end of 2021, there were 1.3 billion video subscriptions, which constitutes an increase of 200,000,000 from 2020.
  
• In June 2021, the Netflix mobile app for Android and iOS was downloaded more than 16 million times.
  
• In 2023, Netflix employed 12,800 people, whereas a year earlier, its staff consisted of 11,300. At the end of 2005, the company had fewer than 1,000 employees. Between 2019 and 2020, Netflix added 1,900 employees, which is the largest number of new employees brought on board over one year in the company’s history.
  
• While in 2019, 85% of subscribers watched Netflix’s movies and shows on their TVs, in 2022, half of its subscribers watched content on their mobile devices.
  
• At the end of 2022, Netflix had at least 17,300 titles across all its international libraries. By comparison, in January 2018, its international library had only 15,400 titles.
  
• Around 80% of Netflix users take the streaming service’s title recommendations offered by the company’s algorithm.
  
• Netflix offers content in over sixty languages.
  
• In the first half of 2022, Netflix accounted for 9.3% of all global downstream traffic volume.
  
• In 2022, the company lost 0.7 million subscribers because of the shutdown of services in Russia, provoked by the war in Ukraine.
  
• Netflix boasted 238.39 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2023. It added around 100,000 subscribers in just two days after the crackdown on password sharing.
  
• Netflix’s overall income in 2022 was around $31.61 billion. This was a significant jump from $1.67 billion a decade earlier.
  
• The company’s net income was $5.408 billion in 2023.
  
• Netflix generated a revenue of $33.723 billion in 2023.
  
• Netflix had 238.39 million subscribers in Q2 2023.
  
• In the second quarter of 2023, Europe, Middle East, and Africa had the highest number of paying customers. Between them, they have 79.81 million Netflix customers. With 75.57 million members, U.S.A. and Canada were in the second position. Having 42.47 million members, Latin America ranked third, while the Asia Pacific region came fourth, with 40.55 million subscribers.
  
• Netflix employees work from one of 32 global offices, or from the comfort of their own homes.

“Netflix” is a portmanteau word, made of two words – “net,” short for “network” – and “flix,” which is a plural form of a slang term for “movies.”

This word was coined in August 1997, when Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings launched their company in Scotts Valley, California, as online movie rentals.

Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos are the co-CEOs of Netflix, with Reed Hastings as the Founder and Executive Chairman of the company.

Before co-founding Netflix, Reed Hastings started a company called Pure Software, which brought him his first fortune. His experience at Pure Software inspired Hastings to prioritize simplicity in his management of Netflix.

For over 25 years, the founders of the company were almost single-mindedly focused on one goal: inviting more subscribers to its streaming services.

Hastings’s unwillingness to air movies in theaters, buy a rival studio, or test a concept for a movie rental kiosk caused disagreements between him and Randolph, and the latter stepped down as the company’s CEO and turned to product development.

Randolph left in 2002 after helping guide it through its initial public offering two years earlier. In 2023, Hastings stepped down as CEO, becoming the company’s Executive Chairman.

Netflix’s leadership team is full of star executives. Ted Sarandos, a co-CEO, oversees the company’s content budget; chief product officer and an incumbent co-CEO, Greg Peters, manages the platform. Scott Stuber, a movie boss, is responsible for making Netflix a major player in Hollywood. There are also Melissa Cobb, who helps Netflix compete with Disney+, and Todd Yellin, product vice president, under whose supervision Netflix entertainment evolves. These and the other 12,800 employees cooperate to increase Netflix’s revenue and market cap, which is estimated at $189,277 billion, as of the end of July 2023.

With a current stock price of over $609, Netflix (NFLX) has come a long way since May 2002, when it had its initial public offering (IPO) and sold 5.5 million shares of common stock at the price of only $15.00 per share, bringing in $1.5 million then. Now, the company’s logo, the red letter “N”, is easily identifiable not only at the NASDAQ, where it trades, but across the world.

On its website, Netflix writes that it is proud to own a letter of the alphabet and that, to emphasize its ownership, the letter “N” should always appear in its signature color.

Despite positive prognosis, these are not the best times for Netflix (NFLX). 2022/2023 were challenging, with subscribers opting out of Netflix services at an unprecedented rate.

In the second quarter of 2022 alone, the company bid goodbye to 970,000 subscribers. This immediately prompted a sell-off of its shares. And although Netflix eventually recovered some of its subscription losses, its business didn’t experience desired growth in 2023.

About one-fifth of all new clients in the US are calling off their subscriptions after just one month. The rate at which Netflix’s long-term customers are unsubscribing has also started to edge up. Even though the platform offers better entertainment than other media companies, its services are no longer unique and indispensable. Netflix has also increased its prices. Though it used to be a cheaper alternative to cable, now it is more expensive than other streaming services. To bear the heat of the competition, Netflix should make some changes in its business this year.

A: Netflix’s competitors include Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, YouTube TV, HBO Now / HBO Go, Sling TV, Crunchyroll, Apple TV+, Twitch, Crackle, Warner Media, Fox, NBCUniversal, and Paramount+.

A: Netflix and Verizon Communications reached an agreement to provide a direct connection from the video service to broadband customers in 2014.

A: Netflix currently offers three streaming plans: Standard with Ads, Standard, and Premium, starting at $6.99 per month and ending at $22.99 per month. The cost of adding another user to a subscription plan is $7.99 per month. Standard and Premium subscriptions are the only plans that offer extra member additions.

A:  Yes, it is possible to share your account within a single household. Everyone living in that household can use Netflix wherever they are.

A: The number of devices that can be used with one account depends on the subscription plan. The Standard plan allows two devices to stream at a time. The Premium plan allows up to four devices to stream at a time.