Netflix has amassed 10.1 million subscribers in the second quarter, the streaming service announced on Thursday.
The media giant has also announced that it has appointed Ted Sarandos as its co-CEO who will eventually succeed the current Netflix Chairman and Chief Executive Reed Hastings.
Netflix has reported positive numbers in its second quarter partly due to the shelter-in-place order.
Netflix has added 26 million paid new subscribers in the first two quarters of 2020. The company had added 28 million subscribers overall in 2019.
However, it has predicted a relatively slower growth in the second half of 2020 as countries slowly begin to ease restrictions with phased reopenings.
“We live in uncertain times with restrictions on what we can do socially and many people are turning to entertainment for relaxation, connection, comfort and stimulation. In Q1 and Q2, we saw significant pull-forward of our underlying adoption leading to huge growth in the first half of this year (26 million paid net adds vs. prior year of 12 million). As a result, we expect less growth for the second half of 2020 compared to the prior year,” Netflix said in a letter to its shareholders.
The media major’s revenue as well as average streaming paid memberships grew 25 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) in Q2.
Despite the pandemic disrupting production, the company estimates growth on the basis of its existing library of titles, hoping to resume production soon.
“For 2021, based on our current plan, we expect the paused productions will lead to a more second-half weighted content slate in terms of our big titles, although we anticipate the total number of originals for the full year will still be higher than 2020,” it said.
“With our large library of thousands of titles and strong recommendations, we believe our member satisfaction will remain high,” it said.
Netflix is set to release 59 new TV seasons, movies, and documentaries this month. Netflix, on Thursday, announced 17 new originals to be released on the streaming platform in India.
While production has resumed in California, resuming production in India and some of Latin America will be more challenging . It is hoping to restart production in these regions later this year.
As competition increases in the OTT segment, Netflix is confident of its strategy.
“All of the major entertainment companies like WarnerMedia, Disney and NBCUniversal are pushing their own streaming services, and two of the most valuable companies in the world, Apple and Amazon, are growing their investment in premium content. In addition, TikTok’s growth is astounding, showing the fluidity of internet entertainment,” Netflix said.
“Instead of worrying about all these competitors, we continue to stick to our strategy of trying to improve our service and content every quarter faster than our peers,” it said.