Netflix has been through some well-documented ups and downs, but for those who still have doubts about the company, Netflix had a resounding answer this week: 27.15 million. That’s the number of American homes that presently subscribe to the streaming service, a number exceeding even the company’s own expectations for the fourth quarter of 2012.

Netflix jumped from 2.05 million U.S. streaming customers in the fourth quarter, up from 25.1 million in the third. It was the company’s largest jump in nearly three years, helping it to report net income of $7.9 million.

“The results reflected just how far Netflix has come since the turbulence of mid-2011, when its botched execution of a new pricing plan for its services — streaming and DVDs by mail — resulted in an online flogging by angry customers,” reports The New York Times. “Investors battered its stock price, sending it from a high of around $300 in 2011 to as low as $53 last year.”

“It’s risen from the ashes,” said Barton Crockett, a senior analyst at Lazard Capital Markets. “A lot of investors have been very skeptical that Netflix will work. With this earnings report, they’re making a strong argument that the business is real, that it will work.”

Netflix’s success reminds both the entertainment and technology industries that consumers want, and are beginning to expect, on-demand access to television and movies.

“Our growth and our competitors’ growth shows just how large the opportunity is for Internet TV, where people get to control their viewing experience,” said CEO Reed Hastings, who has pushed to finance original content and return to an emphasis on subscriber happiness.

“The hope is that original programs like ‘House of Cards’ and ‘Arrested Development’ will lure both old and new subscribers to the service,” notes NYT. “Those programs, plus the film output deal with the Walt Disney Company announced in December, affirm that Netflix cares more and more about being a gallery — with showy pieces that cannot be seen anywhere else — and less about being a library of every film and TV show ever made.”