Netflix added 18.9 million subscribers, the company’s best-ever quarter

Well, after more than 12 years, ~50 quarters, and dozens of Chartr charts using the data, Netflix just broke out its final batch of quarterly subscription figures, as the streamer looks to shift its focus to other metrics (mostly financial ones).

Yes, we are still watching

Reed Hastings’ company has gone out with a bang in the subscriber department, though, reporting a record-breaking quarter where it added almost 19 million subscribers to cross the 300 million paid memberships threshold, buoyed by its forays into live sports streaming. 

Netflix is up more than 13% in early trading, with plenty besides the subscriber numbers for investors to enjoy, like the $10.25 billion in revenue and $1.9 billion of net profit that the streamer hauled in.

It turns out that pitting a Paul brother (either one, realistically) against Mike Tyson and streaming the full bout, even with significant technical outages, is a recipe for racking up new subscribers. Spending $150 million to throw in two Christmas football games helped the streamer to its most-watched Christmas Day on record, while drama fans signed up to catch the Boxing Day “Squid Game” season-two drop.

Though we’ll miss updating our streaming wars chart, Netflix’s decision to stop breaking out just how many subscribers it’s adding may please the likes of Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount — competitors who have never been able to match its astounding growth rate.

The decision may also be prescient for another reason: Netflix can’t keep growing like this forever, and, with another set of price rises also announced in the past 24 hours — the standard plan is going up to $18 — user complaints about the Netflix bang they get for their buck may only get louder.