Netflix Gained 3.6 Million Subscribers in Q1

To say that Netflix posted a successful first quarter would be a gross understatement. During those three months, the company managed to add a staggering 3.6 million subscribers, bringing its total subscriber count to 23.6 million. Not impressed? Perhaps adding the fact that the company’s total number of subscribers increased by 69% since the same quarter last year would help things?

As a result of this rapid growth, Netflix has surpassed Comcast in total number of subscribers. Comcast posted its number of subscribers in Q4 2010 as being 22.8 million, and given the continuous decline of digital cable subscribers over the past couple of years, it’s unlikely that Q1 2011 would put it back on par with Netflix. Instead, it’s likely to make Netflix’s increase look even more impressive.

Of those 3.6 million subscribers gained in Q1, 3.3 million of them reside in the US, while the other ~290,000 are international customers, aka “Canadian”. Given the new total of Netflix subscribers in Canada would total 800,000, that’d mean that over 2% of Canadians now subscribe to the service. Not bad considering it just launched this past fall eh? Ahem.

Netflix’s revenue for the quarter came in at $719 million, which was 46 percent higher than the prior year’s first-quarter sales of $494 million. The company recorded net income of $1.11 cents a share, compared to 59 cents a share in the year-ago quarter and 87 cents a share in the fourth quarter of last year.