LOS GATOS, Calif. — Netflix added another 860,000 paid membership net additions in its U.S.-Canada (UCAN) region during the fourth quarter of 2020, bringing its total paid subscribers in the UCAN market to 73.94 million, the company announced while releasing its Q4 and full-year 2020 financial results on Tuesday.
Globally, Netflix posted 8.5 million paid net additions in the three months ended December 31, 2020, bringing the company’s total subscribers to more than 203 million. Compared to fiscal 2019, Netflix’s global subscriptions grew a whopping 21.9% year over year, according to the company’s letter to its shareholders today.
“For the full year, we added a record 37m paid memberships, achieved US$25 billion in annual revenue (+24% year over year) and grew operating profit 76% to US$4.6 billion,” reads the letter to shareholders.
“Revenue (for Q4 2020) was 1% higher than our guidance forecast, as paid net adds exceeded our 6.0m projection by 2.5m,” continues the letter.
“We’re becoming an increasingly global service with 83% of our paid net adds in (full year) 2020 coming from outside the UCAN region. Our EMEA region accounted for 41% of our full year paid net adds, while APAC was the second largest contributor to paid net additions with 9.3m (up 65% year over year).”
Based on its quarterly guidance for the first quarter of 2021, Netflix says it expects global paid net additions of 6 million in the quarter, as compared to Q1 2020’s paid net adds of 15.8 million, which included the impact from the initial Covid-19 lockdowns, the company says.
Netflix is forecasting US$7.1 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2021, compared to the US$6.6 billion in revenue it achieved in its most recent quarter (Q4 2020).
“We’ve made good progress growing our profitability with FY20 operating margin of 18% rising five percentage points over prior year. For FY21, we’re now targeting a 20% operating margin, up two percentage points from 2020 and higher than our previous 19% forecast, due to a more favorable revenue outlook,” Netflix’s letter says.
The company says its original productions are back up and filming in most regions, with more than 500 titles currently in post production or preparing to launch on the service. Netflix says it plans to release at least one new original film every week in 2021.
For more information about Netflix’s fourth quarter 2020 financial results, please click here.
