Netflix Q1 results: 3 million new streaming subscribers worldwide, record viewing hours

Netflix has posted its earnings report for Q1 of 2012, and reveals its streaming subscriber count in the US is currently 23.4 million, after reaching 21.67 million back in January. While the company noted a net loss of about $5 million, the letter from CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells claimed it is still on a "rapid return" to profitability after last year's missteps and international expansions. Worldwide it now counts a total of 26 million subscribers to the streaming service, although it lost another million or so subscribers to discs, which currently number 10.09 million. That old disc business is still highly profitable however, adding $146 million to the bottom line. Internationally, Netflix added more customers in its first three months of UK / Ireland availability than it did in the same period for Latin America or Canada, and expects its Canadian service to be profitable a quarter earlier than expected.

Reed Hastings also took the opportunity to toss another barb at Comcast for its bandwidth cap-exempt Xfinity TV Xbox 360 app, claiming it should either raise its caps, make them apply to all services including its own or eliminate them entirely. Another development in Q1 was the loss of streaming titles from Starz but it claims that caused no discernible change in viewing or subscriber hours, while customers continue to lean towards streaming TV episodes over movies. Hit the source links below to paw through the PDF and spreadsheet for yourself, we'll let you know if any interesting tidbits are revealed on the earnings call later today.

Netflix Q1 results: 3 million new streaming subscribers worldwide, record viewing hours originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.