Netflix is showing little signs of slowing down, announcing a record new 4.9 million subscribers Wednesday as it revealed plans for an ambitious new nature doc series slated for 2019.
The service also gave an early green light for a fourth season of Orange is the New Black—season three debuts in June.
“We think strong U.S. growth benefited from our ever-improving content, including the launch of the third season of House of Cards and new shows Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Bloodline,” CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells wrote in a letter to shareholders.
All told, 62.3 million people around the world subscribe to Netflix, including 2.6 million who were added in the first quarter. That was more than the 2.28 million subscribers Netflix picked up Stateside in the quarter.
Netflix brushed aside any concerns about competition from the recently launched HBO Now standalone service.
“As we have said in the past, Netflix and HBO are not substitutes for one another given differing content,” Hastings and Wells wrote in the same letter to investors. “We think both will continue to be successful in the marketplace, as illustrated by the fact that HBO has continued to grow globally and domestically as we have rapidly grown over the past 5 years.”
The new eight-part nature series, Our Planet, is being produced by the creators of the hit Planet Earth series: Silverback Films and the conservation group WWE. Netflix plans to release the series across all territories in 2019.
The company met Wall Street’s revenue expectations for Q1, with $1.57 billion, but came up short on earnings: the reported 38 cents per share was below the 69 cents analysts had predicted. Shares were up 13 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday.
CEO Hastings told investors Netflix would be improving its user interface later this year, and would break even by 2016.
Brief Take: Netflix continues to show strong growth in subscribers and content, but the attention paid to HBO Now indicates that the streaming service perhaps doth protest too much.
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