Streaming giant Netflix has released second-quarter earnings showing a substantial dropoff in subscribers compared with the same period last year.
Just 1.54 million new users joined the platform, a stark contrast to the 10.1 million who joined in Q2 of 2020. The company also announced revenue of $7.34 billion and earnings per share of $2.97. The operating cost for Netflix has also risen, and the streaming service spent $2 billion this quarter alone.
The company attributed the down quarter to the pandemic, stating “The pandemic has caused unusual choppiness in our growth and distorts year-over-year comparability as acquisition and engagement per member household spiked in the early months of COVID. In Q2’21, our engagement per member household was, as expected, down vs. those unprecedented levels but was still up 17% compared with a more comparable Q2’19.”
“In Q2, revenue increased 19% year over year to $7.3 billion, while operating income rose 36% year over year to $1.8 billion. We finished the quarter with over 209m paid memberships, slightly ahead of our forecast. COVID has caused some lumpiness in our membership figures (higher numbers in 2020, slower gains this year), which is working its way through. We continue to operate on improving our service for our members and bringing them the best stories from around the world. Our summary results and forecast for Q3 are below,” the company said in a release.
“If we meet our forecast, we will have acquired more than 54 million paid net adds over the past 24 months or 27 million on an yearly basis over that time period, which is similar to our pre-COVID annual rate of net additions.”