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.

Comments

The Decline?

[beheaderaswp]

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.

Re:The Decline?

[thegarbz]

Who is at fault is entirely irrelevant to the end user. They only care about what their $10/m get. Increasingly it's a very shitty movie library with traditional cable level programming and in house shows tossed in.

Netflix wanted to end the cable companies, instead it became one.

Re:The Decline?

[The-Ixian]

Uh.... aren't you forgetting to include a very important element here?

Netflix doesn't have commercials. Period.

That is reason enough for me to have Netflix alone and no other streaming media nor cable nor satellite subscriptions.

I would rather find a back catalog of an old series that I have never seen before and binge on that for several months than to try to watch new content with ads.

My feeling is that it will eventually come to Netflix anyway.... and it always does seem that way.... in any case, I can't miss what I never had.

The meaning of the word stall

[Anonymous Coward]

The increased subscribers by 5.5 million instead of 6.5 million. That's hardly stalling.

Dilution of content

[CRC'99]

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.

Oh noes! Steady growth! Therefore decline!

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

I don't get it.

[Ecuador]

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.