Another 5 Million Subscribers Just Joined Netflix

Another 5 Million Subscribers Just Joined Netflix
A recent poll suggested that account sharing might harm the company's bottom line.

Netflix blew by even its own expectations this quarter, adding millions of new subscribers between April and June.

The company predicted it would add 3.2 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2017. Now the numbers are in, and it turns out 5.2 million people signed up for the video streaming service. That pushes Netflix's subscriber base over 100 million.

Most of the new Netflixers were from overseas; only 1.1 million new subscribers were in the U.S. The streaming service expanded into Canada back in 2010. Now Britain, Brazil and Germany are the top Netflix markets outside North America.

But even that number could be low. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 21 percent of young adults watch from someone else's streaming account. On average, 12 percent of all adults surveyed admitted to using someone else's password for services like Netflix, HBO Now and Hulu.

Netflix's CEO has said password sharing is OK. But that raises the question of how much money the company is losing because of it.

Despite its great numbers, Netflix is still in the red overall. The company has borrowed lots of money to fund its original content, which means it'll be years before the company is cash flow positive.