Wall Street is hoping for positive results from Netflix

Netflix added more than 9 million subscribers in the first three months of 2024, its best start to a year since Covid lockdowns began.

The US streaming giant said 9.33 million paying customers joined its platform between January and March, bringing the total to almost 270 million around the world.

The increase was almost double the 5 million subscribers forecast by analysts and was the best first quarter since adding 15.77 million subscribers in 2020.

But Netflix said it will stop reporting its quarterly membership numbers starting next year. “We are off to a good start in 2024,” the company said.

The Californian company experienced a turnover increase of 14.8 percent in the first quarter.

Recent hits for Netflix include Scoop starring Gillian Anderson and Rufus Sewell, as well as Billie Piper, a film based on how Newsnight secured Prince Andrew’s infamous 2019 interview about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Netflix thrived during Covid lockdowns, as families stuck at home signed up for streaming services.

But it lost more than a million subscribers in the first half of 2022, raising fears of a long-term decline.

The shares lost more than 75 percent of their value in late 2021 and early 2022. Since then, the stock has nearly tripled, although it is still a long way from its 2021 highs.

Subscribers have also returned to the platform in droves, despite a crackdown on password sharing.

Netflix rival Disney said it will also tighten its policy from June, with analysts estimating there will be around 46 million ‘password sharers’.

CEO Bob Iger said this month that Netflix is ​​”the gold standard in streaming” and that if Disney “can just achieve what they’ve achieved, that would be great.”

Sophie Lund-Yates, analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: ‘Netflix’s subscriber growth has turned the lights off again, despite fierce competition and persistent inflationary pressures.

“The bigger question now will be how Netflix continues to minimize churn as rivals catch up with their own cheaper plans.”