Letter to shareholder:
Q4 Results and Q1 Forecast In Q4, global streaming revenue grew 41% year over year to $2.4 billion, while contribution profit rose 74% year over year to $470 million (20% margin). Operating profit totaled $154 million (6.2% operating margin) against guidance of $125 million, while net income amounted to $67 million, compared with our forecast of $56 million. Net income included a -$22 million foreign exchange adjustment booked in other expense due to the strength of the US dollar. As a reminder, the quarterly guidance we provide is our actual internal forecast at the time we report.
We added 7.05 million net new members globally in the quarter, against our forecast of 5.20 million and last year's Q4 performance of 5.59 million. This was the largest quarter of net additions in our history and was driven by strong acquisition trends in both our US and International segments.
Domestically, we added 1.93 million members in the quarter, exceeding our forecast of 1.45 million and 1.56 million in the year-ago quarter. Combined with 15% ASP growth, revenue increased 27% year-over -year to $1.4 billion. US contribution margin expanded 395 basis points year-over-year to 38.2%. Margin improvement was greater than expected due primarily to higher-than-forecast revenue and the timing of content deals.
International membership grew by 5.12 million in Q4, against a forecast of 3.75 million and 4.04 million in the year-ago quarter. Over 47% of our total members are now outside of the US. This growth was very broad based geographically as our original content continues to be well-received all over the world. ASP for the international segment rose 13% year over year (excluding a -$21 million impact from currency). International contribution loss was -$67 million, compared with our forecast of -$75 million, as content spend was slightly lower than expected owing primarily to timing.
In Q1, we project 5.2 million net adds with 1.5 million in the US and 3.7 million internationally. Our anticipation for a year-over-year decline in domestic net adds reflects a difficult comparison in the year ago quarter where we exceeded our net adds forecast by 27%. Similarly, in our international segment, we will lap our Rest of World launch in January of last year. We also expect a greater membership impact from our content slate in the second half of 2017. On a sequential basis, we believe our strong Q4 results likely pulled forward some net adds from Q1’17 to Q4’16.
Since our global expansion is proceeding well, we intend to grow our global operating margin for many years ahead. We’ve been around a 4% annual operating margin for the past two years, and we are targeting about 7% for the full year 2017 based on current F/X rates. From here, we will seek to steadily increase revenue and operating margin as we balance growth and profitability. We are in no rush to push margins up too quickly, as we want to ensure we are investing aggressively enough to continue to lead internet TV around the world. In Q1, we are forecasting a 9% operating margin, higher than our full year target due to the timing of content spend, including moving House of Cards season 5 from Q1 to Q2.
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