“Netflix Inc gave a weak forecast on Tuesday that unnerved investors just as Walt Disney Co and others prepare to escalate Hollywood’s streaming video wars, although the company’s quarterly results beat Wall Street targets,” Lisa Richwine and Vibhuti Sharma report for Reuters. “Shares of Netflix traded down about 1 percent at $355.02 in after-the-bell trading.”
“Netflix predicted it would pick up 5 million new streaming subscribers from April through June. That was below the 5.48 million consensus of industry analysts surveyed by FactSet,” Richwine and Sharma report. “‘What’s making investors nervous is that there are signs of a slowdown in the second-quarter subscriber growth,’ said Haris Anwar, senior analyst at Investing.com. ‘This is made all the more prominent by the looming threat of competition from Disney and Apple.'”
“Netflix added a record number of paid streaming customers in the first quarter, reaching a total of 148.86 million,” Richwine and Sharma report. “Netflix spent $7.5 billion on TV shows and movies for 2018, and executives have said that amount will grow in 2019. The aggressive spending has led to a tripling of the company’s debt in two years, to $10.36 billion in 2018, from $3.36 billion in 2016.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Rising debt as two heavyweights prepare to enter the ring. No wonder Netflix’s investors are nervous.
Hmm, I have Netflix and frankly a lot of their original shows are pretty crap. If it wasn’t for Star Trek and up to now the MCU I’d cancel. Here in Australia we have a streaming service called Stan which has a much better selection and costs the same. Just goes to show that throwing money around doesn’t guarantee quality.
NetFlix is the Sears of streaming….
First the amount of back catalog content on Netflix has been shrinking.
The original content has been interesting and the quality reasonably good.
Increasing the cost of the service by $2 (for my level of access) is annoying given the few titles that seem available.
Prime video (unfortunately) has way more content. I think Netflix has trouble on their hands.
Netflix barely went down at all and I’m willing to bet the stock continues to climb. Netflix investors aren’t as cowardly as Apple investors who dump all their stock on any negative rumor. Netflix trades like a true FANG stock where the hedge funds give it full support no matter what.
Hmmm…sounds familiar. Seems like I’ve heard this before. You, know “$600 phone with no email,” or something like that. Kinda like the proverbial deer-in-the-headlights-look.
Netflix would do well to re-enter Apple’s walled garden. Video streaming is an increasingly competitive market. Their service is quite pricey, compared to Disney and Amazon Prime. It’s a hassle both to subscribe and to unsubscribe, compared to others. And their privacy policy is dodgy. I’m done with ‘em.
So the slow down in new subscribers has nothing to do the the annual 10-20% price increases and loss of content. No it’s easier to blame in on the not yet up and running competition.