The widely used streaming service, Netflix, is now valued at more than $100 billion with its market cap surprising industry observers thanks to better-than-expected numbers of total subscribers worldwide. The value of the company was spurred on by a strong Q4 2017 which saw the company gain 8.33 million additional users around the world.
Greg Peters, Chief Product Officer at Netflix, said:
“I think looking back to the last year I’m just tremendously excited at seeing the range of opportunities that are in front of us and that the technology that we’re investing in can continue to provide incremental benefits and experience which we see through our a/b testing. So, most excited that we have so much more runway in front of us.”
One of the main reasons for Netflix’s success this year was its Netflix Originals line-up; the amazingly popular Stranger Things 2 aired bringing back millions of viewers from the first season. Luckily for the company, it doesn’t seem like the allegations of sexual assault against Kevin Spacey and the announcement that House of Cards will be cancelled has done much to hurt Netflix in terms of the number of users signing up to the platform.
Netflix estimated that it would gain 6.3 million customers in Q4 2017, however, actual figures wildly exceeded this figure and the company amassed 8.3 million customers during the quarter. With House of Cards coming to an end after its sixth season, Netflix is looking to create new shows to keep customers engaged. The company’s current budget for content is between $7.5 billion to $8 billion this year, up from the intended $7 billion.
Netflix says that it’s expecting subscriber additions of 6.35 million for the first quarter of 2018.
Source: Netflix (YouTube) via Techcrunch and Fox Business