Netflix’s password sharing crackdown pays off
San Francisco | Netflix enjoyed one of its biggest spurts in subscribers since the early days of the pandemic three years ago, providing the latest sign that a recent crackdown on password sharing and the rollout of a cheaper version of its video streaming service are paying off.
The video streaming service added 5.9 million subscribers during the April-June period, according to numbers released on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) along with its latest quarterly financial results.
Netflix is bouncing back after a lull following the highs of the pandemic. AP
The gains easily surpassed the roughly 2.2 million additional subscribers that analysts surveyed by FactSet Research had anticipating. Netflix ended June with 238.4 million worldwide subscribers.
Investors seemed unsatisfied, perhaps rattled by management commentary in a shareholder letter warning “quite a competitive battle” continuing to unfold against the backdrop of ongoing strikes by both the writers and actors union in the US that is already bogging down much of Hollywood and threatening to clog the pipelines feeding entertainment to streaming services.
Netflix’s stock price fell over 6 per cent in Wednesday’s extended trading. The decline also could have reflected some investor locking in profits that have accrued while the shares have climbed by more than 50 per cent so far this year.
Money manager Louis Navellier said Netflix now appears “locked and loaded” again after going through a turbulent stretch that included losing 1.2 million subscribers during the first half of last year.
Even though Netflix has bounced back this year, Investing.com analyst Jesse Cohen believes another slowdown may be coming. “It will be a challenge for Netflix to sustain this pace of
Read more on afr.com
