From a business perspective, Netflix's first quarter of this year was marked by steady expansion in sales and subscriber base and significantly higher profits. The streaming service already has nearly 270 million subscribers and plans to spend $17 billion on content this year.
Netflix ended the first quarter with sales of $9.37 billion, beating the previous year's result by 14.8 percent. The company's business results exceeded $2.6 billion, an increase of nearly 30 percent, while its profits reached $2.3 billion, an increase of nearly 80 percent year-on-year.
The significant expansion in the subscriber base contributed significantly to the positive data, as the Netflix base expanded by 9.33 million in the first three months of this year, meaning that at the end of March, 269.6 million homes had already subscribed to the service. The fact that the company has cracked down on password sharing, and ad-supported packages have become more popular, has also helped improve profitability.
The number of subscribers to ad-supported plans increased by 65 percent in the first quarter, and in markets where this option is available, they accounted for 40 percent of new subscribers. According to Netflix, it continues to strengthen its efforts to provide advertisers with the most accurate information possible about how many people their ads reach, and this is supported by collaborations with Kantar, Lucid and Nielsen Catalina Solutions, among others.
Netflix has confirmed that it will spend $17 billion on content this year. The company also announced that starting next year, the number of subscribers will no longer be published on a quarterly basis.
