Netflix has hit another milestone as they have said that International subscriber count number have increased 8.6 percent to 52.03 million. The figure now surpasses their domestic customer numbers of 51.92 million. Analysts have said that betting on original shows puts Netflix in pole position to win over more millennial who are shunning traditional television.
The company’s shares were up 10.5 percent at $178.72 in Tuesday premarket trading, on track to add over $7 billion to Netflix’s $70 billion market value.
Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan – the two brokerages most bullish on Netflix’s stock – each raised their price target to $210.
This year, original TV shows “Stranger Things”, “The Crown” and the latest season of Kevin Spacey-starrer “House of Cards,” received Emmy nominations and brought in more customers than Netflix had predicted for the second quarter.
The company, which has over 100 million customers globally, added 4.14 million monthly subscribers in international markets in the latest quarter, handsomely beating the average analyst estimate of 2.59 million, according to data from analytics firm FactSet.
In the United States, it signed up 1.07 million subscribers, compared with analysts’ expectations of 631,000.
Netflix has often been criticized for spending too much on content as it tries to aggressively gain subscribers outside the United States. The company said earlier it planned to spend about $6 billion this year for original shows and expected to have negative free cash flow of $2 billion to $2.5 billion.
But most analysts backed the company’s strategy favoring scale over profit.
