SAN JOSE, California: Video streaming platform Netflix says that its crackdown on password and account sharing, together with an offering for a cheaper service with advertising, has netted the company many new customers, reported German news agency (dpa).
The number of subscribers rose by 8.76 million in the last quarter. This was significantly better than the just under six million that Netflix had expected.
The video streaming giant now plans to make some subscription variants more expensive for customers in the US, France and Britain.
The company's stock jumped more than 12 per cent in after-hours trading on Wednesday.
Since May this year, Netflix has been taking action against users sharing an account beyond one household. For this, either the co-users pay for their own account, or the previous account holder adds them as an additional member for approximately the cost of the cheapest subscription with ads.
According to earlier calculations by Netflix, around 100 million users had access to a password from another household.
The company is counting on the fact that affected users prefer to pay instead of cancelling the service.
This calculation is paying off. Netflix had a total of more than 247 million paying customers at the end of the quarter.
Netflix revenues rose by eight per cent year-on-year to US$8.54 billion, the company reported on Wednesday. Profits grew by around a fifth to around US$1.68 billion. --BERNAMA