CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT SPARKS NETFLIX GROWTH

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings believes his company’s encouraging first-quarter results with huge customer viewing numbers show increasing engagement with Netflix content.

“Two years we said it was 4 billion hours in the first quarter and over those two years, we have gone from 4 billion to 10 billion hours of viewing,” Hastings says. “And so you can see along with our membership growth, we are also having engagement growth, which given all the new competitors, improving television, is really impressive that Netflix is growing not only the subs, but engagement also.”

“We have continued the focus on the same things over the last couple of years, improving the content, improving the streaming, improving the user interface,” Hastings adds. “And we have seen the rewards of that in continued growth.”

“I think this quarter, in particular, we had some amazing original content with Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, with House of Cards, with Bloodline. And so all of that compounded to really push us forward and certainly what you are seeing is all of Internet TV growing.

“The attention of the new launches of the competitors is only creating a bigger ecosystem, drawing more and more people into thinking, ‘Hey, I have got a check that out and try this Internet TV thing.’’

Netflix’s subscriber base is now more than 60 million..