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Netflix wowed Wall Street with higher-than-expected subscriber growth and healthy Q3 financial results on Monday, sending its stock up 20%.
What drove that success? Well, as this chart from Statista shows, it's all about international users. This past quarter, the company added 3.2 million international subscribers, miles more than the 370,000 it added within the US. After expanding to 130 nations en masse in January, and struggling with slower-than-desired growth thereafter, 45% of the company's 86.7 million subscribers now come from outside the country.
If you're Netflix, that's generally a good thing. Still, it's worth pointing out how the chart's red bar of US subscribers is increasing at a much slower rate than the international subscribers. Sooner or later, saturation could become a global concern for the company (and its ever-hungry investors), instead of just a domestic one.
It's also worth mentioning the company's China problem. Netflix has never been able to tap into its largest potential source of non-US subscribers, and now, CEO Reed Hastings says not to expect a Chinese version of the service anytime soon.
Statista