It’s been a strong Q1 for the industry’s leading streaming service, according to the latest financial report it released on Thursday.

Netflix has kicked off its financial year with US$10.54 billion in quarterly revenue—up roughly 13% from Q1 2024 (US$9.3 billion). Meanwhile, operating income came in at US$3.3 billion, representing another healthy uptick (27%) compared to a year ago. 

One long-tracked metric that’s notably absent from the Q1 financial report is the streamer’s quarterly subscriber count. Netflix decided last year to stop reporting this data, which was an effective reflection of growth during the company’s early years. But now it intends to emphasize revenue and operating margin as “primary financial metrics” instead. To that end, this latest quarter’s operating margin was 31.7%, up from 28.1% in Q1 2024.

During its earnings call, Netflix also announced that co-founder and executive chairman Reed Hastings is transitioning into a new role as chairman and non-executive director. And looking ahead, the company signaled its expectation of making more progress to build out its growing ad tier, crediting this cheaper plan for “creating an additional revenue and profit stream for our business.”

On the whole, older-skewing content like crime drama Adolescence (124 million views) seems to have dominated viewership this quarter. But one kid-friendly highlight was the March release of Plankton: The Movie (pictured), a SpongeBob SquarePants feature that generated 40 million views for the platform. Netflix also launched four episodes from YouTube star Ms. Rachel that it says generated 29 million views in Q1 and “consistently” landed in the global Top 10. 

Licensing YouTube content appears to be a hot new strategy at the streamer, along with a bigger investment in live events. And for younger viewers, in particular, there’s also a refocused gaming strategy afoot that has led to the June launch of The World of Peppa Pig to support new episodes of the preschool toon in the US.