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Netflix Stock Tumbles After US Subscribers Drop For the First Time Ever (barrons.com) 210

Netflix saw its first-ever decline in paid U.S. subscribers in the second quarter, losing 126,000 U.S. users when Wall Street was expecting 352,000 domestic adds. Barron's reports: The slight drop in Netflix's U.S. subscriber base, combined with fewer-than expected international adds in the second quarter, sent the company's stock tumbling over 10% in after-hours trading Wednesday. The streaming company still reported better-than-expected earnings, but investors tend to focus on its subscriber trends and not much else. The company said it sees a return to subscriber growth in the third quarter.

For the second quarter, Netflix reported 60 cents in earnings per share, versus the 56 cents analysts had been expecting. Revenue came in at $4.9 billion, about equal to the consensus estimate. That compares with 85 cents in earnings per share on $3.9 billion in sales in the same period last year. Second-quarter net income was $270.7 million. But Netflix's subscriber numbers tend to be the most important metric for investors, and Netflix fell short where it mattered. It added 2.8 million net new international subscribers but lost 126,000 U.S. users in the second quarter. Wall Street had been expecting 352,000 domestic and 4.8 million international adds, and Netflix had guided to a total of 5.0 million new subscribers.
For the third quarter, Netflix "calls for $1.04 in EPS, $5.3 billion in revenue, and for user numbers to return to growth to the tune of 800,000 new domestic subscribers and 6.2 million international subscribers," the report says. "That compares with 89 cents in EPS on $4 billion in sales in the same period last year, when Netflix also added 1.1 million new domestic subscribers and 5.9 million international subscribers."
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Netflix Stock Tumbles After US Subscribers Drop For the First Time Ever

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  • Karma's A Bitch (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LarryRiedel ( 141315 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @05:44PM (#58942240)
    Unfortunately acquiring paying customers still requires offering something they want to pay for.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Boy, if only the big brains at Netflix had listened to you they'd be able to grow their subscriber base into the trillions and beyond, huh.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, not surprised considering how all the new content is basically PC culture propaganda.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Or, you know, have content providers that don't sell out to the empire, er, Mickey Mouse.

    • Re:Karma's A Bitch (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tomahawk ( 1343 ) on Thursday July 18, 2019 @02:23AM (#58944242) Homepage

      Not increasing the price would probably have helped with retention also.
      It seems they were expecting that more people would buy their service after they increased the price globally, all while losing content to other streaming services.
      Economics, not only karma, is a bitch.

      • Not increasing the price would probably have helped with retention also.

        Prices go up, that's a fact of life. I think the bigger problem with Netflix is what are they offering? An ever decreasing movie library, and ever increasing backlog of old TV that everyone's seen before, and sinking money into new original content that no one asked for or wants. ... Just like a cable company.

    • The problem isn't that they're offering nothing people want to pay for - I think it's mostly just that people binge the shows they want and are then left for a long time thinking "Now what?".

      Personally I've quite enjoyed a great number of their shows, but when I find one I like catching up on the season takes at most 4-5 days (usually more like 3) and then I'm left waiting for the next thing. In the end though it's like $12 per month so I'm not exactly in a rush to cancel it. All my streaming services (Net

    • As a European consumer who is originally from the US. I can tell you that the content here is abysmal compared to what is available in other places. There is literally nothing on Netflix EU that hasn't been available Netflix US for at least 2 years. We're cancelling because we've already seen it all. In Netflix's defense, Amazon Prime isn't much better and neither is Google Play. If they want to grow in Europe, they could - easily probably - if they'd just get some content.
  • Here we go again (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Red_Forman ( 5546482 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @05:45PM (#58942244)

    ...investors tend to focus on its subscriber trends and not much else.

    That's because investors are dumbasses who think infinite growth is possible.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @05:45PM (#58942250)

    That is quite a miss compared to what was expected.

    The timing to me is pretty interesting. It doesn't seem like there are other services around at the moment with offerings that would cause people to leave Netflix and go elsewhere (Disney+ for example has yet to launch). So did these lost subscribers (and even expected subscribers) go elsewhere, or did they just decide to drop streaming for the summer?

    Also can't help but wonder if this has something to do with Netflix dropping the ability to subscribe through Apple in-app purchases [multichannel.com].... That could easily put a damper on acquiring new subscribers.

    • by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @06:15PM (#58942462)

      It is the price increase. We dropped because money spent not watching anything started to seem stupid. We use Amazon for our periodic TV binges and that is enough.

      At a PE of over 100, Netflix needs to show that they are the future of entertainment. It is starting to seem like they are just a small part of the broader ecosystem.

      • It is the price increase.

        I had forgotten about that, I agree that could be a large factor, especially in the dropoff of new subscribers from expectations. I still think Netflix blocking easy signup is a factor in the much lower new subscriber figure.

      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        It is the price increase. We dropped because money spent not watching anything started to seem stupid. We use Amazon for our periodic TV binges and that is enough.

        At a PE of over 100, Netflix needs to show that they are the future of entertainment. It is starting to seem like they are just a small part of the broader ecosystem.

        The problem with that is the future is here. Netflix may have been innovative and industry breaking 5 years ago, but now every man and his dog have streaming services. It's not just the likes of Amazon, even the traditional TV channels have their own streaming platforms. Netflix and Amazon Prime are both now available in Australia... Australia, the last place to get anything.

        The problem with this is that it's fragmenting the industry so people, much like yourself, are saying "Do I really want to pay

      • We dropped because money spent not watching anything

        Why weren't you watching anything? It would seem to me that rather than the price most of your post complains that there's alternative content that you prefer from other sources, not the money itself.

    • I dropped Netflix Streaming because they increased the price and had nothing new that I wanted to watch. There are maybe 5 or 6 series I liked over the years, and all the rest is either blech or "meh". I am guessing most people are dropping for the same reasons. I didn't replace it with any other service, have zero interest in the upcoming Disney+, have no interest in anything Apple or use anything Apple, and watch the same amount of TV.

      I retain cable TV (with TiVo, of course) and Netflix DVD.

      After 6 mon

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Trimaz ( 4609805 )
        At the rate that these streaming services are popping up, I will be dropping all the ones I subscribe to and going back to torrents, again. I like competition in the marketplace, but with all these new services being announced there is no way I will be able to subscribe to everything to watch a movie once or twice a week. I will keep my Prime Video though, since it's a bonus with my Amazon Prime membership.
    • Expectations in the markets are very rarely made by people with a clue. Did the analysts dig in deep and figure out whether the company has good long term plans with sound business practices or are they only superficially checking only published press releases and going with with a guess? I think there's a lot of pseudo scientific decisions being made by the analysts at times. Some tech analyst companies are just downright idiotic or easily influenced with the right contributions (ahem, Gartner).

  • by crgrace ( 220738 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @05:47PM (#58942254)

    I was a fan of Netflix for at least the last 15 years when we started renting DVDs through them. The streaming service when I first signed up didn't have much of interest beyond the Office. Then it went through an amazing period where there was an almost infinite amount of interesting content.

    The last few years, though, more and more things I was interested in were disappearing from Netflix, and I have seen media reports that they are losing the Office and Friends (some of their most popular properties).

    I'm not as big a fan of their original stuff as many other folks (not knocking it, just isn't for me) and the thought of paying for two or three or even four streaming services to get what we want just sounded so exhausting. So, my wife and I decided to cancel Netflix.

    For a while, we watched some shows for free on CBS.com and such (with ads) as well as some youtube stuff, but slowly we have been migrating to non-video-consuming hobbies and it's actually great!

    I am feeling a similar relief now that I don't have Netflix to the relief I felt when we canceled our cable subscription. Over the last five or six years my screen time outside of work has gone down a ton and I'm better for it.

    • We never used the DVD service, but started in with the streaming service pretty early on. It was great when it started - excellent selection of movies and TV series. Their first lineups of original programming was pretty good, too. Lately the licensed properties, as others have noted, have been drying up pretty badly. The new original programming is *very* hit and miss. The only series that have really caught my attention were Dark, Stranger Things, and Mindhunter. My wife watched a couple of other series a

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Expect Disney to lure people into their new subscription service. The prices being quoted now for when it starts 11/2019 will change. Die hard uninformed Disney fans will just pay whatever the new costs will be.

      • Agree with you and the parent poster. It's that dwindling 'legacy' content plus the price hikes ("Do you want to pay $2.95 more for HD"? ) that are making the value proposition seem more and more iffy. I still do DVD's for the selection. And have had similar experience with Netflix original content looking good, good actors, good production values, but it hasn't lined up with stuff I'm interested in. I find myself veering over to YouTube Dust channel for content (also hit and miss) and then just more re

    • by scamper_22 ( 1073470 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @07:15PM (#58942704)

      I'm in your same boat and I find it hard to describe.

      I haven't cancelled Netflix yet, but I'm sure not signing up for another streaming service. I'm not chasing streaming services to find shows I like. That was why netflix was good... it was the default streaming platform. Now with everyone going to their own platform, I don't know what's going to happen. I'm not signing up for any of them. I'll just see how long Netflix stays entertaining.

      The strange thing with Netflix shows is some of them are good. Yet, I'm faced with a problem.

      1. Too much choice. I have no idea what show to even start watching and with these kind of shows, you really have to invest a lot of time and what to see it to the end. I find this much less of a problem with Netflix movies. They're one offs and I don't mind wasting the time. I am Mother for example was pretty good.

      2. Fear of the show not finishing / bad ending. I'm legit fearful of investing a lot time in a show. I'm just not into starting altered carbon or vikings or any of other probably excellent shows they have. Maybe once they're done I will start watching them.

      • Long term, I imagine many of the streaming services will go belly up and the survivors will eventually cross license content.
      • Too much choice isnâ(TM)t the problem at all, not enough choice and a shitty UI is the problem. Let me filter what to watch by IMDB ratings, genre, year, user rating, actors, etc. Iâ(TM)m not interested in your shitty recommendations. Nor any series that isnâ(TM)t completed yet. I hate watching two seasons of something only to find out you have to wait another year for the next season.

  • Downfall (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @05:47PM (#58942262)

    The Downfall of Netflix: a Netflix Original.

  • There's literally nothing to watch on there. Their shows are mostly drivel, that the likes of HBO would be ashamed to put out. To make matters worse, they clearly try to maximize their dollar to screen time minute ratio, so even if the show would look OK at a faster pace it's so drawn out people lose interest. And on top of that they keep raising the prices as well.

    • There literally is.

      Yeah, they do a lot of experiments andf let people try to produces stuff HBO et. al. would not.

      Frankly, that's a good thing.

      Sabrina, much to my surprise, is great.
      Bo Jack Horseman is great.
      Stranger things is great.
      Love death an robots was great.
      Back Mirror is great.
      Castlevania is great.
      Umbrella Academy is great.
      The Marvel stuff is all great.

      On and on.

      • by mark-t ( 151149 )
        I'd be surprised if any Marvel stuff is still on Netflix by the end of this year.
        • It's not on Netflix for a lot of non-US subscribers.

          We never had Friends either.

          Same for Star Wars (although not sure that was on Netflix for US subscribers).

          If you think the range available for US subscribers is decreasing, you would be shocked to see just what isn't available for non-US subscribers.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by sexconker ( 1179573 )

        Sabrina, much to my surprise, is great.
        Bo Jack Horseman is great.
        Stranger things is great.
        Love death an robots was great.
        Back Mirror is great.
        Castlevania is great.
        Umbrella Academy is great.
        The Marvel stuff is all great.

        On and on.

        Sabrina, no.
        Bojack, first 2 seasons, rest crap.
        Stranger Things, no. Mediocre spoof of 80s tropes for the first season, crap thereafter.
        Love Death & Robots, no. Even if you do like one episode, that's it. The next is completely different.
        Black Mirror holy shit no. It's as if it were written by an angsty15 year old, then sent over to a 40 year old in Britain who thought it wasn't heavy handed enough.
        Castlevania, first "season" was good, second quickly turned into animu wackery.
        Umbrella Academy haven't see

      • by Fringe ( 6096 )
        Interesting that you consider Sabrina "great"; it's one of the reasons I gave up. I'd been an uninterrupted Netflix subscriber for 15 years, quit last month because there wasn't anything I wanted to watch. We use Hulu and Amazon a lot, Vudu a few times a month... which is cheaper per viewing than a Netflix subscription was for us.

        And Sabrina? The original comic, the series, the movies... all were fun. No moralizing, no horror. This new one is dark, brutal, graphically-sexual in a really bad way and c

        • One of my big gripes is the remakes that are so much darker than the originals. I have no desire to even try Sabrina. I did try Charmed, didn't like it. This isn't unique to Netflix, but they seem to be doing a lot of it.

        • Interesting that you consider Sabrina "great"; it's one of the reasons I gave up. I'd been an uninterrupted Netflix subscriber for 15 years, quit last month because there wasn't anything I wanted to watch. We use Hulu and Amazon a lot, Vudu a few times a month... which is cheaper per viewing than a Netflix subscription was for us.

          And Sabrina? The original comic, the series, the movies... all were fun. No moralizing, no horror. This new one is dark, brutal, graphically-sexual in a really bad way and constantly aggressively "woke". Much like the Charmed reboot, it seems to have a very loyal but very small audience, appealing to the type of person fancying themself a critic or reviewer but not appealing to normal working people. But the trouble is... they didn't provide any programming for people who just want to be entertained, not intersectionalized, horrified or lectured-to.

          There is plenty of laugh-track garbage for mindless consumption on Netflix too.

      • None of those interest me personally except Bo Jack can be funny. I'd drop Netflix if the family didn't watch it. Having said that, I have enjoyed a few series:
        * Breaking Bad (I did peter out after season 3, but that's just my life)
        * Narcos season 1 - that one sucked me in
        * Random episodes of Archer
        * And finally for Formula 1 nerds like me: Drive to Survive. When Daniel Ricciardo left Red Bull for Renault followed by Red Bull switching engines from Renault to Honda ... chills.
      • by Trimaz ( 4609805 )
        Yikes. Does your teach know you're browsing Slashdot or are you waiting for class to start?
    • There is a show called Dear White People.

      Oh no wait that is why I cancelled. Tired of left wing narcissist identity politics and do not want to pay for it. Fuck Netflix.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @05:54PM (#58942300)

    Netflix needs more "CSI" type shows, like those that saved television.

    We could have.

    CSI: NY
    CSI: Miami
    CSI: Boston
    BSI: City Name Here
    CSI : CSI
    CSI : CSI : CSI

    They also need more shows about science, like:

    American Pickers
    Mountain Men
    Finding Bigfoot
    Aliens
    Duck Dynasty
    Swamp People
    Hillbilly HandFishn
    Honey BooBoo2

    There is just too much "dumb" content on Netflix, like Documentaries, Movies about non-celebrities, etc.

    They need to appeal to the common educated person with high brow shows like the above.

    • Holy shit don't give them any ideas dude!

    • by Hodr ( 219920 )

      I think their concept of copying every popular cooking show, spending 10x as much money on it, and having it hosted/headlined by a nobody with zero charisma is a real winner.

  • They're messing up (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Yes, they are dealing with competitors that pull popular titles for in-house streaming services, but the answer to that is always "original content."

    The problem is a large fraction of the content they're generating to replace the lost content isn't any good. A lot of it is grievance oriented; picking at historical scabs or contemporary inequities. People are tired of that. Even the supposed victims are sick of it. But that's what you get when you're governed by a mentality that, for instance, thinks t

  • They walked out the door and looked up and discovered life that wasn't on a screen. It is called Planet Earth.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I had Netflix from 2010 to 2018. I adopted streaming early, and it was great, and the recommendations were great.

    Then, slowly, it got worse. They kept adding more and more crap. The S/N ratio got lower, and the recommendations became terrible. Eventually I realized I NEVER watched Netflix. So I dropped it in October of 2018, and haven't looked back. We got Prime in our house, and it seems a lot better. Not all this useless crap it keeps recommending. It's still not as good as Netflix was in maybe 20

    • I am about to drop my Netflix account for many of the reasons you cite, but I question the move to Amazon Prime.

      I turned on Prime about 2 months ago to watch old TV shows like Perry Mason, and The Outer Limits (hey, I am old, and falling for nostalgia), and late last month started rewatching The Sopranos.

      Then on the 15th of July, I had blown by my 1TB cap on my Comcrap internet. The culprit: Amazon Streaming. Apparently an hour of HD content (ala The Sopranos) is 6GB of bandwidth. Netflix sends that in abou

      • Then on the 15th of July, I had blown by my 1TB cap on my Comcrap internet. The culprit: Amazon Streaming. Apparently an hour of HD content (ala The Sopranos) is 6GB of bandwidth. Netflix sends that in about 500MB.

        Oh, Comcrap...

        But doesn't Amazon let you choose the streaming setting? [trishtech.com] According to them, their highest quality level should still use less than a gigabyte for an hour.

        • Only available on devices (tablets and phones, or on computers). The three devices I have with Amazon Video apps (Tivo Romio, XBox One, and my panasonic smart TV) all have no configuration for setting quality settings.

          The HD streams are 3 - 6GB per stream. A killer of bandwidth caps...

          • Gosh. I wonder if it still supports changing stream quality even if there are no controls for it. IE, if you had a router that could throttle the bandwidth that the TV had available to it. I didn't have a bandwidth cap, but when I had DSL the bandwidth was so shabby that a high-quality stream would starve everything else in the house for bandwidth, and the only way around that was to starve the streaming device (my router didn't do QoS, not that I think QoS would actually have helped that much).

  • Netflix says that when they lose "Friends" (cost $100 million) "The Office" ($90 million) and Disney content ($150 million), it will "free up budget for more original content".

    They better be ready to truly move from being an encoding & CDN business to being a content-making business...

    I think it is interesting that Netflix is having a hard time growing international subscribers. No doubt part is due to legacy mode distribution deals gumming up the works for streaming rights. But it also might be that

  • I'm one of the people who dropped them this quarter. They raised the cost of their Ultra HD service to $15.99 a month, and that was just a bridge too far for me.

    Most of their 4K content is animation and stand up comedy, which benefits little from that resolution. Maybe when they have a couple years of backlog to go through I'll consider resubscribing.

  • don't give a fuck attitude. This last price increase literally had a notice with it that was like "don't like it, here's the cancel button, we fucking dare you."

    I dropped the 4K and have just the regular HD now since the 4K content was almost nothing anyway. I don't need to see Dave Chappelle's pores. The next price increase will likely lose me.

    Their prices have doubled but their content hasn't.

    • Their prices have doubled but their content hasn't.

      That's the crux isn't it. Price rises are a fact of life and will happen, but it seems here that a lot of people start their post complaining about price only to finish it by saying that what Netflix is missing is stuff they want to watch.

  • ... I happened to have bumped my DVD subscription up to the next higher tier two months ago. Maybe Netflix's excursion into streaming is turning out to be a flask in the pan....
  • then actually watching. The library is a far cry from what it was a few years ago (and for less money). So I cancelled.

    Also my family kept watching annoying and loud reality shows like "Nailed It". Cancelling was a bonus to my sanity.

  • I joined because of Jessica Jones, then got into DareDevil, Iron Fist and Stranger Things. Without the Marvel shows I can't justify keeping Netflix just to watch Stranger Things especially with the long gap between seasons. I am keeping Amazon Prime for shopping but get some benefit w/ its shows & movies offerings. I'd rather buy a few movies a year that I really want to see on Amazon Prime then pay for Netflix month after month which seems to be throwing spaghetti against the wall w/ its Netflix movies
    • Those little kid shows are why I am canceling. I do not watch that stuff and even tried since there was nothing else now. I wish I could get the time I spent watching Jessica Jones
  • by theurge14 ( 820596 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @07:10PM (#58942686)

    Higher prices and less content.

    The day I spent more than 15 minutes looking for something "sciency" to watch and kept swiping past shit like Ancient Aliens was when I decided to cancel.

    This isn't really that complicated to understand.

  • My user experience would be greatly improved if I could tick a box that would allow me to browse without seeing any Netflix Originals content.

    Of course if the introduce advertising I'll drop my subscription immediately.

  • I've never been a subscriber myself. (I grew up with broadcast TV and maybe I'm too set in my ways for anything else except renting DVDs.) I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the show 'Lucifer' starring Tom Ellis. Most of the comments have been about how bad the current content is. Of course, whenever you go to forums about this type of thing, that's what you mostly see. People just seem to post complaints more than praise.

    'Lucifer' was one of the few commercial shows I watched on TV, one of my gui

  • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • "Netflix Stock Tumbles After US Subscribers Drop For the First Time Ever" For the first time ever this year? They certainly hurt and lost a ton of subscribers during their first price hike. That being said I think this is a great time for another price hike! They already have plans to raise it again and I'm calling it now for when they do they will lose much more.

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