Analysts expect Netflix will raise prices again in 2024 to boost revenue and earnings growth.
Analysts at UBS Securities (via Variety) wrote in a research note that they “expect to see rate increases this year” and that those increases, combined with increased revenue from the company’s new ad-supported and healthy subscriber gains, could push total revenue growth to 15 percent in 2024. That’d be a significant jump compared to the seven percent growth Netflix saw in 2023.
Price hikes could be bad news for Canadians, many of whom are already frustrated with Netflix. The company last raised prices in 2022, pushing its standard plan to $16.50 per month, $1.50 more than it previously cost. Meanwhile, Netflix’s 4K ‘Premium’ plan jumped from $19 to $21. Before that, the company raised prices in October 2020.
Since then, Netflix introduced other changes, some of which didn’t play well with subscribers. The company cracked down on password sharing and introduced an $8/month fee customers had to pay if they wanted to keep sharing their Netflix with someone else. This pissed off a lot of users, with plenty of people saying they planned to cancel Netflix over the change, though those cancellations didn’t seem to materialize. The company also introduced a new, cheaper ad-supported plan.
Although Netflix hasn’t said anything official about price hikes, Variety notes that executives have said increases are on the table. During Netflix’s Q4 2023 earnings call, co-CEO Greg Peters said the streamer “largely put price increases on hold” because it saw paid sharing “as a form of substitute price increase.”
“Now that we’re through that, we’re able to resume our sort of standard approach toward price increases. And price increases, you’ve seen us do that in the U.S., U.K. and France. Those changes went well better than we forecasted,” Peters said.
In other words, Netflix took a year off from price hikes while it cracked down on password sharing, and now it’s ready to get back to raising prices. Coupled with previous reporting about incoming Netflix price increases, it sure seems like we’ll see a price hike this year.
Source: Variety
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