Netflix shares rise on back of promising earnings report

Despite growing fears over a slowdown in subscriber growth, Netflix posted impressive quarterly results on Monday evening aided by the company vastly surpassing its international subscriber addition expectations.

Shares of the television streaming service surged by as much as 20% in after hours trading as the results quelled investors' discontent over the future of the company.

Three million, two hundred thousand subscribers joined Netflix in the quarter to September, outperforming the two million, which was originally given as guidance by the company as well as analysts' expectations.

Wall Street expectations were also crushed in the earnings report, with profits almost double what was quoted in analyst estimates. Profits of $51.5m, or 12 cents a share, was up from the same quarter last year's profits, $29.4m or 7 cents a share.

Netflix now has 83m subscribers and is investing heavily in high-quality original programming such as smash hits Stranger Things and Narcos, and this appears to be reaping benefits.

However, the company is still not in the clear as cash flow in the quarter was negative $500m, due to the heavy programming investments.

After the previous quarter's disappointing results, CEO Reed Hastings admitted that "we are growing, but not as fast as we would like or have been."

On a video call with analysts discussing the latest quarterly results, Hastings said that the Colombian-set crime drama Narcos was particularly successful for the service, but did urge caution about the company's prospects.

"We're having broad success around international," Hastings. "We're continuing to make those investments but we've got a lot of room to go to improve the service."