Netflix’s electrifying growth rate continued during the 2013 fourth quarter. Over 2.3 million new households in America signed up to the streaming service. The results were the best quarterly performance the company has seen in the past three years.
In its international markets, including Latin America and Canada, the streaming service increased by another 1.7 million, allowing the company to surpass the 10-million-subscriber mark overseas for just the first time.
Netflix overall ended 2013 with more than 44 million subscribers said the company in a quarterly letter sent out to shareholders on Wednesday.
For months, an active debate has taken place in investment circles and the media about how much bigger Netflix can become.
Wednesday, officials from the company projected it would gain an additional 2.25 million new subscribers in the United States and 1.6 million internationally during the first three months of 2014. That, in both cases, is an improvement over its performance during the first quarter of last year.
Reed Hastings the CEO and David Wells the CFO of Netflix said in a prepared letter that years of new member growth were ahead for the company.
The two attributed the subscriber growth in the fourth quarter to marketing effectiveness, service improvements and sales of devices that connect to the Internet.
According to the quarterly filings of the company, the last time there was a gain of over 2.3 new American subscribers was the first quarter of 2011.
At that time, 3.3 million new subscribers were added, but that comparison is not exact since its streaming and its DVD by mail service was still linked.
Internationally, Netflix has continued to operate showing a loss because of efforts in expansion, but it showed less of a loss during the 2013 fourth quarter. The loss, which was $57 million, was the least that it has shown of any other time during 2013. Netflix projected a loss of $42 million for the first quarter of 2014.
