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?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumping? No! Not renewing licenses on bargain bin fodder the "owners" decide to massively increase licencing costs for at the end of the contract: oh yes.

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.

Re:The Decline?

[Kielistic]

Except the auto-play trailers for whatever they are pushing at the time. I have to keep my TV on mute until I find what I want to watch. And that can sometimes take a long time with what little content they have left.

Re:The Decline?

[barc0001]

If you think that's bad, try using some DVDs with their unskippable commercials and warnings for 5 minutes before you can watch what you want... Netflix is still a massive improvement over most other forms of consumption of media.

The meaning of the word stall

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re: The meaning of the word stall

[reanjr]

When your car stalls, it continues to roll forward.

Eleven mentions of Microsoft ..

[najajomo]

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 :]

i can't answer for the op, but for me yes

[aepervius]

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.

Look to CBS

[Layth]

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.

Re:Look to CBS

[Oswald McWeany]

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.

I refuse to pay for CBS out of principle. I don't want to support the fragmentation of online streaming. I'd rather go without than steadily pay more and more until my streaming costs are higher than what cable used to be.

Re:Look to CBS

[Megane]

In the US, ESPN has a sweet deal to be put in all but the basic tier of cable networks. Any sports beyond ESPN is usually on a special, extra-cost sports package. And then there are still league-specific channels that require you to have the sports package before you can add them. Very few games are on the free OTA channels.

It's so nice that I don't care about sportsball. Except for the part where afternoon sports games on the OTA channels invariably run overtime and screw up the schedule of what my DVR was set to record. Handegg always runs beyond its time slot, often by more than 30 minutes. And sometimes they still want to run the post-game show for its full half hour.

Re:Look to CBS

[sexconker]

All-you-can-eat and new content is not sustainable.

If a show / movie is successful, everyone involved in production (from actors to set dressers) want more $$$. Costs skyrocket for sequels to hit movies and future seasons of hit shows.

With current streaming platforms, show popularity doesn't bring more money. Your hit content needs to constantly drive growth and maintain subscriptions to justify its own rising costs. Once everyone that even remotely cares has a Netflix account, there's no room to grow, and successful shows with rising costs will be cancelled.

You need some way to monetize views if you want to support creating new content. If that means ads, I'm out. If that means limiting the number of hours you can watch, I'm probably still in. If that means paying a premium for certain shows, I'm probably out for those shows (YOUTUBE RED LOL). If it means paying a premium to remove ads, I may still be in.

I currently have Amazon and Netflix, but may drop Netflix, or do the juggle where I have it for a couple months out of the year then kill it off.

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.

In many countries - they don't even try

[GeLeTo]

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.

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."

They turned a profit didn't they?

[Torp]

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 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.

Re:I don't get it.

[misexistentialist]

14% drop is not much when the stock increased like 140% in a year. It's the buying that's retarded

Stalls?!?

[jpaine619]

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...

Re:Fixed that car analogy for you

[hcs_$reboot]

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.

Except if you are on a descent. And Netflix is!

You don't need to subscribe to everything at once

[Layth]

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!

Re:Won't be dead until it adds ads

[ConceptJunkie]

Does referring to it as "grey sources" make you feel better about the piracy you engage in?

Does referring to it as "piracy" make you feel better about the theft (actual deprivation of something) that excessive copyright terms commits upon society?

Does calling it society make you feel better about the cess pit of human misery that is humanity? :p

Does calling it a "cess pit of human misery" make you feel better about not being able to get a job with a master's degree in Folklore and Mythology, and your girlfriend leaving you for a guy that plays the saxophone?

(p.s. Not attacking you personally, I just thought it was funny.)