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Netflix Stock Price Tanks As Customers Quit Over Higher Prices (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Netflix released its earnings report (PDF) for the second quarter today, where it reported $1.97 billion in revenue and net income of $41 million. The company did however report only 1.54 million subscribers, which is below its projections of 2.5 million new subscribers. As a result, stock is down around 14 percent in after-hours trading. "Our global member forecast for Q2 was 2.5m and we came in at 1.7m. Gross additions were on target, but churn ticked up slightly and unexpectedly, coincident with the press coverage in early April of our plan to ungrandfather longer tenured members and remained elevated through the quarter," Netflix wrote. "We think some members perceived the news as an impending new price increase rather than the completion of two years of grandfathering." The company defended its price hikes, writing that "while ungrandfathering and associated media coverage may moderate near term membership growth, we believe that ungrandfathering will provide us with more revenue to invest in our content to satisfy members, thus driving longterm growth." In the past, Netflix gained 13 million new subscribers in 2014, and 17 million in 2015. Comcast will reportedly allow Netflix onto its X1 platform, which may entice more customers to the streaming service.
people left due to there shrinking library months of the same stuff may 1 or 2 new movies etc. yes they do do original stuff most of it pretty good but once you put it out people see it theirs no retention left. and as some people said blocking them from viewing threw vpn etc.
Not because of the price, but because of the lack of content.
Pay attention to the summaries, you nitwit!
Market economy depends on accelerating growth; not only must their subscriber base grow but the rate of growth must grow. The fact that rate of growth has declined is utterly terrifying to investors.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
and the dull nature of Netflix original content
Different strokes. Personally, I'm loving their original content!
House of Cards
Orange is the New Black
Daredevil
Jessica Jones
Sense8
Marco Polo
Love
Peaky Blinders
and now Stranger Things
I've heard Bloodline is good, and Luke Cage is coming. Some of their comedy specials aren't too bad either. Ali Wong's "Baby Cobra"...I haven't laughed that hard in a while.
For me, it's been a long time since I've been this happy with video content. I recently ditched cable and I'm not going back. Netflix is, at the very least, doing it as well as most anybody else is and without the support of commercial sponsors.
How much time do you want to spend in front of a television anyway?
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
When we cancelled our cable, they wanted to raise what I was paying from $87 (for cable TV + Internet) to $137. I would be getting nothing extra in return. No faster speeds. No additional channels or features. It was just a $50 price hike for the sake of hiking prices. When I asked about the $99 promotional prices they were advertising, I was told those were for new subscribers, not people who had been with them for about 15 years. When I questioned why the price was so high, I was told that it was actually a "$150 value" so I was really getting a "great deal."
We canceled cable and now we're paying $35 for Internet plus $10 a month for Hulu. (We were already subscribed to Netflix and Amazon Prime pre-cord-cutting and would have kept those either way so those really didn't factor in.) After factoring in buying more DVDs and VOD content (from Amazon or Google), I figure that we were saving around $70 a month. After a year of cutting cable, our former cable company announced the usual round of large price hikes so we're saving even more now.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Honestly I could cancel the dvd plan and wouldn't notice, but certain members of my family insist on having it (even if they barely use it, go figure).
That's the way it's always been for most people, which is how Netflix was so successful for its first stretch in the early 2000s. Only a minority of customers would receive and send back multiple DVDs each week -- most people would get some movie they were told was "awesome" and it would sit on a shelf for a month. I remember some comedian even doing a shtick about people who'd get all these "classic movies" from Netflix on DVD that they never would have been able to find at a local Blockbuster, but then they'd end up sending them back unwatched a couple months later.
They do have great content, but for Sense8 I gave up after that scene where they zoom on a dirty dildo. I'm all for creative freedom and I appreciate that they depicted all kinds of lifestyles, but that scene was just a cheap attempt at creating some kind of buzz. I don't mind graphic scenes but I do mind feeling like my "queer sex tolerance threshold" is tested on purpose, I find that insulting and condescending.
lucm, indeed.
Know who else has that "problem"? Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. Something like $3 billion in cash arrives in Omaha every month for redeployment. But as a master capital allocator, Buffett is happy to sit on cash until something attractive crosses his desk, i.e., no overvalued "tech" companies.
Unfortunately, the macro pattern over the last few decades has been boom-bust as easy money leads to stupid, short-sighted exuberance for shares of mediocre businesses with owner-unfriendly management (hence the non-GAAP bullshit and stock-based compensation that's somehow not an expense).
The adults in the room endure the pain of sitting on cash -- QE and the central bankers certainly make it hard -- before the the bubble de jour implodes and the markets crash back to reality. But after the party is over, patience is rewarded with bargains for shares of businesses with real, enduring, high-quality profits. Think of it as time and personality arbitrage.
Hulu having that content is the reason why Netflix doesn't have it... It's exclusive. They were willing to pay more.
Voting the parent a troll seems rather unfair. It's a pretty accurate summary of the problem for Netflix: the gaps might not be their fault in some cases, but they're still the ones asking their customers for money and providing a disappointing experience in return.
I'm a little surprised they aren't in a position to play hardball in some of these cases. There aren't that many places that are going to show reruns of older TV shows and generate significant extra licensing revenues from it, and it seems like if they insisted they would only work with rightsholders who would licence shows in their entirety on a long-term basis, they could turn that into a marketing advantage over any competitors who did not.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.