Netflix Says ‘Stranger Things 3’ Was Its Most Watched Season, Ever

Netflix fell short of its subscriber forecast in the third quarter in the U.S., and projected lower Q4 subscribers than Wall Street was expecting with competition looming from Apple and Disney. Still, the company reported solid growth and beat analyst forecasts for profit.

The company added 6.7 million total streaming subscribers, including 500,000 in the U.S. and 6.3 million internationally. Netflix previously projected global subscriber net adds for Q3 of 7.0 million (800,000 U.S. and 6.2 million internationally). As of the end of September 2019, Netflix had 158.3 million total paid subs, including 60.6 million in the U.S.

Netflix reported Q3 revenue of $5.25 billion, in line with Wall Street estimates, and earnings per share of $1.47 — topping analyst forecasts of EPS of $1.04.

Netflix’s Q3 subscriber growth was aided by a relatively strong slate of content releases including Stranger Things season 3 — which the company said was the most-watched season to date with 64 million member households viewing it in its first four weeks — and the seventh and final season of Orange Is the New Black.

In recent months, Netflix investors have fretted about looming competition from major new competitors in the streaming space. Next month will see the debut of Disney Plus ($6.99 monthly) and Apple TV Plus ($4.99 per month) — both of which undercut Netflix’s pricing, but will have far smaller content offerings out of the gate. Set to launch in early 2020 are WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and NBCU’s Peacock.

“The launch of these new services will be noisy,” Netflix said in its Q3 shareholder letter. “There may be some modest headwind to our near-term growth, and we have tried to factor that into our guidance. In the long-term, though, we expect we’ll continue to grow nicely given the strength of our service and the large market opportunity.”

The Q3 results are a turnaround from the previous quarter, when Netflix fell significantly short of subscriber forecasts and lost U.S. customers (130,000) for the first time since 2011, when it split the DVD-by-mail and streaming services.

For Q4, Netflix is forecasting 7.6 million global paid net adds, with 600,000 in the U.S. and 7.0 million for the international segment. Analysts had been pegging Netflix to add as many as 9.3 million net new paid subscribers (2 million U.S., 7.3 million overseas).

Original content releasing in the year-end quarter — historically Netflix’s strongest period of sub gains — includes Martin Scorsese’s critically lauded film The Irishman starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino; El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie with Aaron Paul; season 2 of comedy series The Kominsky Method; and live-action fantasy series The Witcher.