Netflix says its anticipating subscriber numbers to slow, despite posting another record take-up.
The streamer says 9-point-6 million people signed up between January and March (with 1.74 million in the US and 7.86 million internationally).
However, it’s warning the growth rate may not be maintained in the next quarter with new competition on the horizon from Disney and Apple. For Q2, Netflix projected total paid net adds of 5 million, with just 300,000 in the US and 4.7 million international.
Netflix said it satisfies only a small part of the demand for TV. “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.”
It’s predicting “some modest short-term churn effect as members consent to the price change” in subscribers of 8% with numbers falling to 5.4% in the second quarter.
New subscription levels have already been put in place in the United States, Brazil, Mexico and parts of Europe. “The response in the US so far is as we expected and is tracking similarly to what we saw in Canada following our Q4’18 increase, where our gross additions are unaffected, and we see some modest short-term churn effect as members consent to the price change,” Netflix said in its shareholder letter.
However, with new content on the way in the form of Stranger Things (July 4th), 13 Reasons Why, Orange is the New Black, The Crown and La Casa de Papel (aka Money Heist) as well as big films like Michael Bay’s Six Underground and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, Netflix says it’s on course for its highest-ever subscriber levels.
Profits in the first three months of 2019 climbed to $344 million following a 220% increase in sales to $4.5 billion.