Slashdot Mirror
Netflix's Subscriber Growth Stalls (bbc.co.uk)
Netflix shares plunged by more than 14% on Monday, after the firm reported disappointing subscriber growth. While the entertainment service added 5.2 million subscribers last quarter, it forecasted a growth of 6.2 million. BBC reports: Investors are worried about Netflix's growth potential in the face of increased competition from tech giants such as Apple, YouTube and Amazon, as well as traditional firms, which have started to invest more in online streaming. Disney, for example, plans to launch its own streaming service and stop licensing some of its material to Netflix.
In a letter to investors, Netflix called it a "strong but not stellar quarter," ending with about 130 million subscribers globally. The firm added just 670,000 subscribers in the U.S. -- far short of the more than one million it added in the second quarter of 2017. It added 4.5 million subscribers internationally, fewer than the two most recent quarters but up 8% year-on-year. However, it said its finances were strong. The company reported $3.9 billion in quarterly revenue, up 40% compared to the second quarter of 2017. Profits totaled $384.3 million, almost six times the figure during the same period a year ago.
In a letter to investors, Netflix called it a "strong but not stellar quarter," ending with about 130 million subscribers globally. The firm added just 670,000 subscribers in the U.S. -- far short of the more than one million it added in the second quarter of 2017. It added 4.5 million subscribers internationally, fewer than the two most recent quarters but up 8% year-on-year. However, it said its finances were strong. The company reported $3.9 billion in quarterly revenue, up 40% compared to the second quarter of 2017. Profits totaled $384.3 million, almost six times the figure during the same period a year ago.
It doesn't help that Netflix has been dumping content as well. Time magazine noted a reduction in titles of about one third in 2016.
Pickings are pretty thin. And they've cancelled some good originals. Seems to me that quality of programming is king in that market. Dumping popular content is a mistake.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Netflix won't be dead until it adds ads. If it ever goes there, my family will probably just let the 50% of viewing we do off of grey sources slide up to 100% (again).
If it added 5.2 million new subscribers, its *rate* of growth stalled, not its *growth*. The second order derivative not the first.
I subscribed to Prime for The Grand Tour, but Black Mirror is on Netflix and its really cheap to subscribe and even I'm tempted.
The increased subscribers by 5.5 million instead of 6.5 million. That's hardly stalling.
Too much of "explore titles related to" when I do a search....
Since did slashdot become a giant advertising hoarding and stop posting real technology stories. Eleven mentions of Microsoft on the front page of the Microsoft slashdot. Followed by mentions of Netflix, D-Wave, Samsung, Roku, Apple, National Geographic, Uber, Amazon. "Jeff Bezos is the richest person in modern history". If I want to salivate over rich people I could read about it in Forbes Magazine :]
Since 100% of the stuff I get from grey source are *not* available at ALL in my country due to geolocation market restriction, the argument of lost sale does not even hold. I normal buy/license anything i watch, but company which decide my region should not be allowed to buy it ? Fuck them.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
... when you raise the prices while lowering the quality of the content. And not only in the US.
CBS spent around 8 million dollars an episode for their star trek series.. and then didn't even put it on TV.
You've got to be a private subscriber and stream it because they know that live tv is not the future.
Instead of paying for 700 channels you don't watch people will subscribe to 4-5 different streaming services that interest them.
When are these dickheads going to realise that the more they dilute the market into more and more service providers, the fewer subscribers everyone will have.
I'm sure they'd love a market where you pay $19.95/mo each to Disney, Netflix, Amazon, YouTube Red, etc etc etc.
The reality is, people might pick one or two - and that's it. Then you get people like me that won't buy any - just because the companies keep dividing up their content and I don't want to pay for each small slice.
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
In my country Netflix has minuscule share compared to HBO Go. Why? Because their subtitles are a complete joke - almost all of them are machine translated. Compare that to HBO Go where all movies have perfect subtitles and the children movies are dubbed.
They still added five million new subscribers. Less than "forecast", but it's still not bad. It means they're getting at least forty million dollahs a month extra in revenue. Quite a distance from actual decline. First the growth has to go negative before they'll actually start losing customers. But it's still positive, it just isn't growing as much as the professional wishful thinkers were wishing for. The growth of the growth (IOW the second derivative of revenue) has dropped to zero, but, you know, that's only bad for VCs who're trying to max their valuations. It's not bad for the company as a whole. They're still growing.
What they do with content I have no idea, I'm not a subscriber. Buy some stock, go to the stockholder meetings and petition in favour of your favourite "originals."
When your car stalls, acceleration from the motor drops to zero, so your velocity will drop due to rolling and other resistance. Eventually the car will stop.
Here, if we take velocity to be analogue to revenue, we still have acceleration so velocity is still picking up. It's the jerk (technical term) that's dropped to zero.
Netflix teaming up with Obama is an easy way to alienate half of America.
I was talking with a few guys at the office with high school aged kids. They said youtube has replaced tv/movie/netflix programming in their houses.
Combine that with an ever shrinking library of content and the decline of Netflix is easy to predict.
Thanks for the baseless Insane hysteria, but I already collected enough in the last few months.
The stupid obsession with growth at all costs...
However, their market share will drop sharply when all the other idiots launch their own streaming service since, as it's been said before, people will subscribe to one or two at most.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Growth didn't stall, just didn't reach _predicted_ targets.
I don't get it. If you have a finite population, I would expect the growth RATE to be higher at first and lower as the market gets saturated. Why would anyone expect the growth to accelerate when OVER 50% of households had Netflix from last year? The global subscriber base is not that saturated, so there was an 8% growth year to year, which doesn't sound bad either - I mean you always expect to get the easiest chunk of customers first anyway, growth rate should slow down later on.
14% price drop because you didn't expect the minority of the population who are Netflix hold-outs to suddenly sign up? That's retarded.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
TRUMP
First world problem
You geniuses sure have an odd definition of "stalls". I'd think adding 5.2 million subscribers would count as growth..
Who the fuck writes these headlines? Fucking clickbait...
After Netflix blocked most VPNs on the planet, I gave them a stop. Then, after some time, I received, again, a free-month offer! And this, before Netflix publishes their subscribers count. If this is not to increase temporarily the number of subscribers ...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The problem is people figured out they could make more money off the stock market than by actually you know, running businesses. A whole industry exists that creates money out of thin air by insane speculation. The leadership of corporations themselves have an overly vested (pun intended) interest in their share price. The speculation market depends on volatility in share price. It really doesn't matter whether it goes up or down as long as it is constantly moving.
What this has created in modern businesses is this constant focus on making projections and announcements and just what the next quarterly report says rather than actually building a business with long term vision.
shares dropped by 14%, fourteen!
and for what, actually turning up decent growth numbers.
i don't see Apple's stock falling because their screw ups in India.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... Netflix's growth was not sustainable. The last price increase, the availability of content elsewhere and the diminishing breadth of their content have tapped the brakes on growth. The question now becomes, when will Netflix's subscriber sign-up rate go negative, i.e., loss more than they gain each month?
Programming. Programming I find objectionable. For example; ... I liked the premise but the reality of gratuitous homosexuality had me fast forwarding through those scenes initially but that got irritating. So I stopped watching it.
Sense8
Some Argentinian movie that showed a kid masturbating (no I didn't watch it).
OK so the argument is "well, you don't have to watch it". No, I don't have to watch Sense8 or that wet dream for Pedophiles but I don't agree with gratuitous sex scenes and I'm certainly not going to subsidize their production with my dollars indirectly with my subscription.
I was more than happy to pay for Daredevil etc. which is why I signed up but no more dollars for netflix. Sorry Daredevil fans, actors etc but I'll be pirating the next season.
Before everyone jumps on me for being a homophobe my position is I don't care what you do in the privacy of your own home. I do care that you want to tell me all about it by putting it on TV or shouting about on the streets while dressed like an idiot.
The creimertards, "APK", Russian-conspiracy theorists, and the faggot/INCEL/pedophile/traitor/Nazi trolls are all the work of disreputable political operative David Brock, and his fifty cent army of "nerd virgins".
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/david-brock-hillary-clinton-correct-the-record/
Earlier they gained notoriety for their duplicitous "Correct the Record" misinformation campaign on behalf of presidential candidate Hitlary Clinton.
They are are employed by a Democrat affiliated "progressive" propaganda works called "American Bridge 21st Century". According to Wikipedia their biggest funder is George Soros.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bridge_21st_Century
The purpose of their spamming and cyber-stalking is to silence unapproved narratives. They do this by deterring free public discussion and poisoning any forum that does not implement censorship of unapproved viewpoints.
On this news, investors reacted as they are wont to do: hysterically. No wonder we have market collapses every so often, with investors reacting like neurotic sheep.
The stock dropped when Netflix _added_ 5 million new customers in one quarter? That makes no sense. The company is growing at a rate of about 20% per year at the moment. That is pretty darn good for just about any company in any market.
Their quantity over quality strategy was bound to backfire eventually. It doesn't matter how much content they have if only 10% is worth watching. They have definitely got the most slickly produced/shittily written shows of any service. The Obama/Rice debacle probably didn't help, either.
People should be warned: subscribing to Netflix stunts your growth.
Netflix has done incredibly well ever since it's creation. It is still profitable, even beating it's estimates for this quarter.
The problem is that it's rate of growth has slowed. Not surprisingly for a company that has done so well for so long. So it's only going to grow at maybe 15-20% a year, rather than 30% a year.
Still a great company, that is expanding and will continue to do well. It's best year may be behind it, but it's good years are still better than most other companies.
Buy now, when it is cheaper and everyone else is panicking.
(Yes, I do own the stock - or rather long term call options on it. I bought them this morning.)
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
For a mere $10 a month you can watch all the shows created for one streaming network in january and then get this...
You can cancel your subscription and sign up for a different network, and then watch those shows on a different network too!
Fragmenting would be just fine, if the industry used standards.
But it doesn't. Each channel wants its own seperate UI. If you want things to work well, in 2018 you still (!?!) have to pirate (since non-DRMed files are the only decent standard we have right now). It's really hard to take this industry seriously. They seem to be trying to lose.
Meanwhile, look at music. I can buy CDs and FLAC files from many different sources, and it all works perfectly through MPD (at home), Airsonic (in the car), etc. I pick the music from anywhere, and I play it however I want. I can't lose, so I continuously shove money down their throats.
Thanks to standards, the music industry basically obsoleted piracy (sure, some people still do it, but there's no great incentives). But with TV, if you aren't pirating, you're missing out.
Surprise surprise people don't want another premium cable network which is exactly what Netflix has stupidly turned itself into. Whats worse is they killed every competing movie jukebox service (what people actually want) and video rental store during their market conquest before they changed their business model.
If it's not plainly fucking obvious to anyone, the fact that many cable providers now allow you bundle Netflix in with your cable or internet package (or it is used as a value add) should be a pretty big clue.
What else could Netflix be? If they don't own any content then their business is completely at the whim of the licensing fees charged by other companies. And when these other companies decide to open their own streaming service to keep all the profits themselves, Netflix would be screwed. So they have to make their own content. The Netflix DVD by mail service is still the best there is for any kind of physical media rental. And the selection is amazing.
i tried fuboTV to gain access to WordCup 2018 footage. pretty cool. US based service provider that just got started..
because as i said I buy (books/game) or license/subscribe (film/serie) whatever I watch. if i watch something I *already* am subscribed for the month therefore it does not remove any money from netflix, crunchyrolls or amazon if i watch something else. In fact by your own argument if I don't watch that grey film/episode/anime/whatever then I am stealing money from them. So if I watch twitch instead ? Or free youtube ? Or one of the other video I have as dvd ? Your argument fail as a devil advocate.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org