Netflix coming to 150 new countries “earlier than expected”

Streaming subscription video on demand provider Netflix will be able to complete its global expansion strategy, which involves launching in around 150 extra countries, sooner than expected.

This is according to a letter from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells to shareholders, dated 20 January 2015.

“In late Q1, we’ll be launching Netflix in Australia and New Zealand,” Hastings and Wells said. “Later in the year, we’ll launch in additional major countries, in keeping with our global strategy.”

According to Netflix, its international expansion strategy over the last few years has been to expand as fast as it can while staying profitable on a global basis.

“Progress has been so strong that we now believe we can complete our global expansion over the next two years, while staying profitable, which is earlier than we expected,” the letter said.

“We then intend to generate material global profits from 2017 onwards,” said Hastings and Wells.

Netflix is already available in around 50 countries, and the company said it has learned a great deal about the content people prefer, the marketing they respond to, and how to best organise themselves for steady improvement.

“Acceleration to 200 countries is largely made possible by the tremendous growth of the Internet in general, including on phones, tablets and smart TVs,” Netflix said.

“We intend to stick to our core ad-free subscription model. As with our initial round of international expansion, we’ll get some things wrong and do our best to fix them quickly,” the letter added.

The 150 additional countries were not named by Netflix.

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