Netflix reported that third-quarter net income, revenue and subscription all increased from a year ago, and said that its streaming video business was now driving growth.
"Q3 represents our fourth consecutive quarter of more than one million net subscriber additions. This growth is clearly driven by the strength of our streaming offering. In fact, by every measure, we are now primarily a streaming company that also offers DVD-by-mail," said Reed Hastings, Netflix co-founder and CEO. "At the same time, the introduction of our streaming offering in Canada in late September has provided us with very encouraging signs regarding the potential for the Netflix service internationally."
Click here to see third-quarter highlights for Netflix
Netflix Inc. said it earned $38 million, or 70 cents per share, up from $30.1 million, or 52 cents per share, in the same period a year ago. Excluding the cost of stock options, earnings were 78 cents a share, above Wall Street's expectations of 71 cents.
The Los Gatos, California-based company said revenue was up 31 percent to $553.2 million from $423.1 million.
Analysts had predicted revenue of $550.9 million.
Netflix also said subscription numbers increased to 16.9 million, a whopping 52 percent jump from the same time last year. The company reported 15 million subscribers at the end of the previous quarter.
Some 66 percent of all subscribers watched at least 15 minutes of streaming video from Netflix in the quarter, up from 41 percent a year ago, and 61 percent for the second quarter of 2010. In Q4 a majority of Netflix subscribers will watch more content streamed from Netflix than delivered on DVD. And, Netflix said, with that transition in the business from mostly DVD to mostly streaming, this will be the last quarter the company will report this metric.
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