By Emily Hawkins
Netflix raked in almost £1.4bn last year from its British subscribers, in the first tranche ofpublicly issued figures for the country.
The US streaming titan said it amassed £1.38bn in revenue for the year ending 31 December 2021, in annual accounts filed in London at the end of last week.
After previously including UK numbers in with its accounts in the Netherlands, this marks the first time the tech firm has disclosed its statistics for British subscribers separately.
Netflix has recently taken a knock to its global army of subscribers, announcing in July that it had haemorrhaged almost 1m (970,000) subscribers between April and June.
The economic crunch and viewers’ lives returning to pre-pandemic normality had seen subscribers cancel memberships in droves.
Its third quarter results later this month will reveal whether the tech firm has been able to meet its new customer estimations of around 1m, for July through September. Wall St analysts had previously put this number at 1.84m prior to the company’s last results in July.
Accounts filed in London showed that the California giant’s arm concerning UK subscriptions produced a £27.9m pre-tax profit. Netflix also contributed £5.2m in tax to the Treasury’s coffers in the period.
Earlier this year in March, the streaming service hiked the cost of its plans by £1, with its basic plan increasing to £6.99 and its standard plan to £10.99.
Some 17 per cent of Brits are cutting subscription-based services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime, according to data published by software firm Sitecore.
“Increased competition makes subscribers agile in search for quality and price, meaning firms may face higher volatility in subscribers through a recession and may need to cut prices to keep consumers loyal, which will ultimately affect profit margins,” noted XTB’s chief market analyst Walid Koudmani earlier this year.
Speaking to CityA.M. in August, Koudmani said that Netflix had managed to curtail a steeper drop in subscribers thanks to a “hugely successful” fourth season of sci-fi hit show Stranger Things.
However, he warned that Amazon’s long-awaited Lord of the Rings series could “exacerbate the decline in Netflix subscriber growth.”
Netflix’s third quarter results are expected on Tuesday 18 October.
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