Thursday, October 31, 2013

Netflix is Bigger than HBO and Comcast, on One Measure

With the important caveat that average revenue per account and profit margins are disparate, Netflix is, by at least one or two measures, bigger than HBO , and also is bigger than Comcast on one measure.

Netflix is bigger than Comcast when measured by paying subscribers, and Netflix is bigger than HBO in terms of gross revenue and subscribers.

Comcast is far bigger than Netflix in terms of average revenue per user, while HBO is vastly more profitable, in terms of profit margin. 

HBO probably has margins in the 33 percent range, while Netflix margin is in the five percent range. Also, Comcast has average account revenue above $80 a month. Netflix has average revenue per user of about $10 a month.

Comcast third-quarter 2013 results showed the firm lost 129,000 video subscribers, ending the period with more than 21.6 million video customers. Netflix has about 30 million U.S. subscribers.

Comcast also lost 348,000 video subscribers through the first nine months of 2013, as well.

Comcast now has almost as many high-speed Internet subscribers (20.2 million) as video (21.6 million), and that business still is growing. Comcast gained nearly 300,000 broadband subs in the quarter.

Some think the growing popularity of Netflix is one reason Comcast recently launched an antenna basic plus HBO package that offers consumers a low price and access to HBO, seen by some as a competitor to Netflix, in many ways.

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