Netflix data reveals how foreign markets are fueling its growth

Netflix released three years’ worth of revenue and subscription data this week that show just how fast the streaming giant is growing internationally.

More than 57 percent of Netflix’s 158 million streaming subscribers and nearly half its revenue so far this year have come from outside the US and Canada, according to the breakdown filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Asia-Pacific region is Netflix’s smallest but fastest-growing market, the figures show. The number of paid members there has more than doubled since the end of 2017 to about 14.4 million as of Sept. 30, while revenue has jumped more than 82 percent to about $1 billion.

Those are much steeper increases than in the US and Canada, where revenue has grown 10.7 percent and subscriptions have increased 14.8 percent in the same period. Netflix had 67.1 million subscribers and $7.3 billion in revenue in the two countries this year as of Sept. 30, the company said.

“In light of the Company’s growing number of memberships and revenue from outside the United States, this regional reporting is consistent with how the Company reviews and manages its membership and revenue trends,” Netflix wrote in a Monday SEC filing.

More than half — or some 47.3 million — of Netflix’s 91.2 million subscribers outside the US and Canada are in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, where revenue has risen 68.4 percent to nearly $4 billion since late 2017, according to the numbers.

Latin America boasted 29.3 million subscribers and about $2 billion revenue at the end of this year’s third quarter, up 49 percent and 24.7 percent, respectively, from the end of 2017, the filing shows.

The numbers came ahead of Netflix’s January earnings report for the fourth quarter of this year, which will reportedly be the first to include a regional breakdown of revenue and subscriber numbers.