Netflix Q3 results: APAC revenue climbs 19% to $1.13 Bn, led by strong content in India

Netflix stated that the revenue growth rate in APAC was the highest among all regions.

Netflix saw its revenue from the Asia Pacific (APAC) region increase 19 percent year-on-year (YoY) to $1.13 billion in the third quarter of 2024, driven by a strong line-up of local content in India, Japan, Korea and Thailand.

In a letter to shareholders, Netflix stated that it is improving its product-market fit in the region, and that the revenue growth rate in APAC was the highest among all regions.

It's worth noting that APAC is still the smallest in terms of revenues for the company, accounting for 11.5 percent of its overall Q3 revenues that stood at $9.83 billion, a 15 percent increase YoY.

Netflix added 2.28 million paid members in the APAC region during the quarter, bringing its total to 52.6 million. Overall, Netflix added 5.1 million paid members in Q3, taking its total subscriber base to 282.72 million. The service stated that it is averaging about two hours of viewing per paid member per day, even with the effects of paid sharing.

The company had previously announced its intention to stop reporting quarterly paid membership additions in Q1 2025. This decision is because the firm believes it now has multiple pricing tiers across various markets due to which each incremental paid membership has a different business impact.

Netflix now aims to focus on revenue and operating margin as its primary financial metrics, while considering engagement the best proxy for member satisfaction.

In the letter, Netflix mentioned that the Vijay Sethupathi-starrer Maharaja was among the most watched movies during the quarter, with 22.6 million views. The service defines views as the total hours watched divided by the movie runtime.

Read: Netflix bets on cricket, documentaries to attract users in India amid rising competition

Netflix's India prize

India has emerged as an increasingly important market for Netflix's future growth in recent years, while also serving as a key content hub for the platform. This comes amid a rising appetite for digital content among consumers in the world's second-largest Internet market.

However, India's price-sensitive nature has made it particularly hard for the streaming service to gain a significant foothold, as most of its rivals offer their services at lower prices.

That said, the service has made some headway into the country, on the back of successful original titles such as Sanjay Leela Bansali's Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar and licensed films such as Kiran Rao's Laapataa Ladies, which is the country's official entry for the 2025 Oscars in the Best International Feature Film category.

In the previous quarter, Netflix had stated that India was the second-largest market in terms of paid subscriber additions and the third largest in terms of revenue growth percentage, without disclosing any specific numbers.

Last year, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos had said that India is a "big prize" because it has an enormous population of entertainment-loving people and they will "ultimately do great" in the country.

The streaming major is however set to face stiff competition in the country following Reliance Industries’ joint venture with Disney, which combines the businesses of Viacom18 and Star India. The deal includes JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar, two of India's top streaming services.

Amazon is also strengthening its presence in the market. The online retail giant recently acquired certain assets of its former rival MX Player, including its apps and select content from its library and merged them with its ad-supported service, miniTV, to create Amazon MX Player.

Amazon Prime Video, the streaming service bundled with its Prime subscription, will also start showing limited advertisements during its shows and movies in India starting in 2025, the company said earlier this week. Other players in the space include ZEE5, Sony LIV, and Apple TV+.

Netflix, which began offering ad-supported subscription plans in 2022, is currently available in 12 markets including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, and has garnered about 40 million subscribers as of May. The streaming service however doesn't offer these plans in India at present.

Read: Netflix to launch in-house adtech platform by the end of 2025

In the markets where these plans are available, it accounted for over 50 percent of signups and membership grew 35 percent quarter over quarter in Q3, the company said in the shareholder letter.

"We’re on track to reach what we believe to be critical ad subscriber scale for advertisers in all of our ads countries in 2025, creating a strong base from which we can further increase our ad membership in 2026 and beyond," the firm said.

"We’re pleased that we’ve reaccelerated our growth and, as we head into 2025, we expect to deliver solid revenue and profit growth by both improving our core series and film offering while investing in new growth initiatives like ads and gaming" Netflix told shareholders in the letter.