In a recent shareholder letter, Netflix revealed its plans to crack down on password-sharing among its customers in the United States. Although the streaming giant had previously indicated that tougher password restrictions would be imposed by the end of March, that didn’t happen in several key markets, including the U.S. However, the company said it was “pleased with the results” of a paid password-sharing program it launched in four countries and announced plans to introduce a “broad rollout” in the U.S. by the end of June.
Under the new policy, subscribers with standard or premium accounts can add an “extra member” at an extra cost. Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain already saw their Netflix users become subject to the new paid sharing policy in February. Netflix said, “With each launch, we learn more about how best to roll out these changes and what matters to members the most, in particular maintaining travel/watching on the go and the ability for people to better control access to their accounts as well as transfer profiles to separate accounts.”
Netflix also announced that it is shutting down the DVD-by-mail service that it launched the company a quarter-century ago. The service, which boasted more than 16 million U.S. subscribers, had been steadily dwindling during the past decade and generated just $145.7 million in revenue last year.
Despite the shift away from its DVD-by-mail service, Netflix reported a 1.75 million gain in subscribers for the January-March period, nearly 550,000 more than the average estimate among analysts surveyed by FactSet. Although the subscriber increase was smaller than Netflix has historically reported for the first quarter, it was a stark contrast to the loss of 200,000 subscribers that the company sustained at the same time last year.
