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Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD-1.28%) streaming platform Max outpaced Netflix (NFLX+1.27%) subscriber growth during the third-quarter of 2024.
The media giant announced Thursday that Max gained a record 7.2 million subscribers in the third quarter, reaching 110.5 million global users as of September 30. This surge marks the platform’s strongest quarterly growth since its launch.
The company credited the growth to recent expansions into international markets, including Europe and Latin America, earlier this year.
“Thanks to our rapid international expansion and continued investment in high quality, diverse content, we saw momentum accelerate in our global direct-to-consumer business in Q3,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said in a press release.
Warner Bros. Discovery stock rose over 10% during intraday trading on Thursday.
This marks the first time in at least five quarters that Max has outpaced Netflix, the industry’s leading streaming platform, in subscriber additions.
In October, Netflix reported adding over five million paid subscribers in the third-quarter of 2024. However, Netflix remains the industry’s leader with 282.7 million paid subscribers as of the end of September. Still, its subscriber growth has slowed over recent quarters.
One explanation for the slowing growth is that a surge in new subscribers, driven by Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown implemented last year, is beginning to taper off.
Wedbush analyst Alicia Reese wrote in a recent note that “Netflix is now lapping its password crackdown.”
More broadly, Netflix is shifting its focus away from subscription numbers all-together and aiming to steer investors’ attention toward profitability. The company said it would stop reporting subscriber numbers at the beginning of 2025.
At the same time Netflix has been emphasizing its growing ad-business.
“It’s still very early for our advertising initiative,” Netflix said in third-quarterly earnings report. “As we said last quarter, it takes time to build a new revenue stream and we don’t expect ads to be a primary driver of our revenue growth in 2025.”
However, Reese wrote that she expects Netflix’s ad-supported tier, which it debuted in 2022, to “become the primary growth driver in 2026.”