Netflix Delivers Shocking Update On Its Subscriber Numbers
Netflix released its subscriber numbers and the announcement was a shock to many in the industry to say the least.
I don’t know if the streaming wars have reached their full peak yet which sounds nuts, but we are certainly in the thick of it where some of these platforms are concerned. There is a major competition going on in terms of content, subscriptions, and really everything involved with this landscape. Of course, as has been the case for, well, since the beginning, Netflix is at the forefront of how the landscape is shaking out and they are often used as a measuring stick for how the streaming world is moving. On Tuesday, Netflix released “good” news, so to speak, and it has more than a few industry analysts surprised by the announcement. Netflix had been preparing the public and more important investors for some pretty bad news, but that doesn’t seem to be completely the case.
In a situation where expectations were managed on an almost expert level, Netflix released its second quarter subscriber results and the numbers didn’t bear out exactly like they had thought and others had speculated. The streamer said that in the second quarter they lost about 970,000 subscribers during this time period and had kept their worldwide total above 220 million. Now, why was this kind of loss considered a net win by Netflix? Again, that all has to do with how one viewed the situation. There was growing concern that this earnings report would be a bloodbath for the streamer and they had floated the idea that two million subscribers lost could have been in play for this period.
Other analysts had suspected that the numbers could have been even worse than that. It’s one reason there had been a massive selloff of Netflix stock back in April and saw the price drop about 35% in a single day. It’s failed to recover in any meaningful way since that point. Though Deadline did continue to report Netflix saw its shares get a bump in after-hours trading, seeing the price tick up about 7%.
This is a time of some transition for Netflix which has had to make some changes this year because of a variety of factors. For starters, they raised prices this year to $15.49 with inflation and content creation at the forefront of the reasoning. And they are also planning on rolling out ads on the platform sometime next year, leading to some derision by subscribers who’ve been without any forward-facing ads from the jump.
Where this all leads is anyone’s guess. While Nextflix’s overall business model and revenue appear quite healthy at this point, there is more than a little competition out there in the landscape that didn’t exist even a few short years ago. With Disney+, Amazon, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+ and many others ramping things up, the landscape is becoming crowded and platforms are vying for the same pool of subscribers. It could be a rocky few years for Netflix and others.
