SAN FRANCISCO, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Netflix, the world's leading streaming entertainment company, on Tuesday posted its first-quarter 2022 financial results with quarterly revenue of 7.87 billion U.S. dollars, a year-on-year growth of 9.8 percent.
Its paid net additions were -0.2 million. The suspension of service in Russia and winding-down of all Russian paid memberships resulted in a -0.7 million impact on paid net adds.
"Excluding this impact, paid net additions totaled 0.5 million. The main challenge for membership growth is continued soft acquisition across all regions," the company said. For the second quarter of 2022, Netflix forecasts that the paid net additions will be -2.0 million versus 1.5 million in the year ago quarter.
In addition to 222 million paying households, Netflix estimates that its service is being shared with over 100 million additional households, including over 30 million in the United States and Canada region.
"Our revenue growth has slowed considerably... Streaming is winning over linear, as we predicted," the company said, adding that it will be holding the operating margin at around 20 percent.
The company's about 10 percent revenue growth in the quarter was driven by an 8 percent year-on-year increase in average streaming paid memberships and 2 percent year-on-year growth in ARM (Average Revenue per Membership).
Operating income of 1.98 billion U.S. dollars, up 25.1 percent year over year, was above Netflix's forecast of 1.8 billion dollars beginning of the quarter due to lower than projected content expenses.
Its diluted earnings per share (EPS) in the first quarter was 3.53 dollars compared to 3.75 dollars a year ago.
The net cash generated by operating activities in the first quarter was 923 million U.S. dollars compared with 777 million dollars in the prior-year period. Free cash flow amounted to 802 million dollars versus 692 million dollars. "We continue to expect to be free cash flow positive for the full year 2022 and beyond," the company noted.