Netflix on international charge
July 24, 2014
By Colin Mann
Analysis of Netflix subscriber data by pay-TV analysis firm Digital TV Research backs up comments made by CEO Reed Hastings on Netflix’s Q2 Earnings Call that there is a growing demand for control and for the consumer be able to click and watch what they want, resulting in a stepping-up on international expansion.
While Netflix has some 35,085,000 US subscribers, it has 12,907,000 across its international operations. Of those territories, the UK and Ireland leads the way with 4,452,000 subscribers, with Canada recording 3,000,000, Latin America 2,455,000 and the Nordic countries 2,140,000.
David Wells, CFO advised on the same call that Netflix was looking at a range of 700 million to 800 million broadband households globally. “In all of these territories, mainly outside the US in most of the developed markets in Europe are growing at a much faster pace. So those numbers are going to grow and grow. For us, if you look at China about a quarter of that, we’re addressing a large swap in Europe and we would look to further that in Europe later if we’re successful. And so we like what we see as Reed said earlier we’re really do see widespread adoption and join in Netflix as a product, beyond demand and aspects the great content that’s produce in any market and the exiting aspects of us as a global distribution platform are being able to bring great content to markets in the US to markets in Europe and Asia we like the prospects of our opportunities there.”
“In September, we’ll be launching Netflix in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. This launch into markets with over 60 million broadband households will significantly increase our European presence and raise our current international addressable market to over 180 million broadband households, or 2x the number of current US broadband households,” Netflix said in a Q2 Results Letter to Shareholders.