Netflix rakes in $6.4 billion in Q3, expects 200 million subscribers

Netflix's recent Q3'2020 earnings show strong increases in revenues, net income, operating income, and subscriber growth. The company expects this trend to continue and push total subscribers to 200 million.

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Netflix just reported its Q3 performance and the results are stellar insofar as earnings. The company raked in $790 million in net income (+18%) on $6.436 billion in net revenues (+20%) in the three-month period ended September 30. Subscriber growth hit 2.2 million paid sign-ons, missing internal projections by 300,000 users. Netflix spent roughly $5.1 billion on marketing, costs of goods and services, tech costs, and other expenses, leaving $1.31 billion in operating income (+34%).

As of Q3, total paid subscribers sit at 195 million. The streaming titan expects this number to jump to 200 million by the holiday season in Q4 2020. APAC was the biggest contributor to Q3 subscriber growth--APAC region sign-ups were up 66% YoY and accounted for nearly half of the total market subscriber growth.

"For Q4'20, we forecast 6.0m paid net adds vs 8.8m in Q4'19. As we have highlighted in our recent investor letters, we believe our record first half paid net additions would result in slower growth in the back half of this year. If we achieve our forecast, it will put us at a record 34m paid net adds for 2020, well above our prior annual high of 28.6m in 2018"

Netflix also notes that shows like Lucifer and Cobra Kai were huge hits; 50 million Netflix subscribers watched Cobra Kai's first season in the show's debut launch month.

The report also says that Netflix "remains quite small in overall screen time" compared to major competitors like video games and YouTube streaming.

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