2019年10月28日
By 蒂姆Siglin 特约编辑
思维之流

Netflix's Stock Price Tumbles as Higher Prices Lead to Churn

July 2019 was an opportune month to buy Netflix stock, shortly after the company announced its Q2 results. Overall revenue was up, year over year, by 26% to $4.92 billion, meaning that earnings per share (EPS) beat analysts’ estimates by an impressive 8.16%. The company’s cash on hand was up to $5 billion, an increase of 28.11% compared to a year prior, meaning it added around $1.60亿美元用于战争基金.

By all measures, beating EPS estimates is a formula for a stock to rise. 但从苹果的股价来看, sometimes rational discussions give way to disproportionate expectations. 在Netflix的案例中, because the company only beat EPS expectations by single digits—rather than the 30% average of the prior three quarters—the stock took a beating.

The argument for the subsequent sell-off of Netflix—the stock dropped off precipitously, losing 10% over the course of 2 days—was a decrease in subscriber growth in the U.S. 市场. Netflix lost 126,000 paid subscribers in the U.S., even though its overall gain in subscribers was more than 2.本季度为700万美元.

Perhaps due to the expectation that Netflix constantly beats EPS estimates, analysts had expected 5 million subscribers to be added during the quarter. 事实上，只有一半的数字被增加了, as well as the fact that subscribers in Netflix’s home 市场 declined, 导致股票遭受重创. From July 10, when Netflix closed at $381, to July 17, when it was trading at $362.44 just before the earnings announcement, the stock had traded 与in about a 5% range. After the earnings and subscriber shortfall announcement, the stock lost 16% of its value and closed at $307.30. It has fallen even further as of this writing, closing at $299.八月十一日. 14. In other words, in roughly a month, the stock went from $381 to $299.11，整体下降约21%.

有趣的, 匆匆一瞥, 这就是2019年第二季度下跌126点的原因吗,000 subscribers—less than two-tenths of 1 percent in the U.S. 而Netflix拥有60家.2 million subscribers in Q1 2019—caused such an uproar.

It turns out—and this is the warning for OTT-based services—that the subscriber drops were in parts of the U.S. 市场 where Netflix had chosen to raise prices.

What’s also interesting is that this coincides 与 a recent finding that customers in the U.S.—the most mature 市场 for Netflix subscriptions—are not going to tolerate price increases beyond a certain point, 与每月21元 being the rate consumers are most comfortable 与. That means that as Netflix increased monthly subscription prices, something had to give. And what consumers gave up was the Netflix subscription. (It brings up an interesting question: What term do we use for this? 我们把这个叫做搅拌还是无线切割?)

So why do I say that July was a good month to buy Netflix stock? 两个原因.

首先，收益报告没有涵盖 陌生的东西 season 3, which launched the week after Q2 ended. Netflix is expecting 7 million subscribers to be added in Q3, including a bump in U.S.-based subscribers, thanks in no small part to 陌生的东西.

Second, the company’s international growth is solid. Back when Netflix had limited uptake in foreign 市场s, analysts complained that it wasn’t diversified enough across the globe. So it goes almost 与out saying that the brouhaha around a microscopic drop in subscribers in the company’s most maturing 市场 is a tempest in a teapot.

如果行业在倾听, 这对亚马逊来说是一个非常重要的教训, 迪斯尼, Hulu, 吊索的电视, and a host of other OTT players: The 市场 has price elasticity, but it’s not nearly as elastic as it was a few years ago.

[This article appears in the September 2019 issue of 流媒体杂志 “多少才算太多”?"]