Netflix Q2 subscriber loss widens

San Francisco, Jul 20 (US): Netflix shed nearly a million subscribers during the spring amid tougher competition and spiraling inflation straining household budgets, adding urgency to the video streaming service’s efforts to launch a cheaper option with commercial interruptions.

The Associated Press reports that the April-June contraction of 970,000 accounts, which was announced as part of Netflix’s second-quarter earnings report, is by far the largest quarterly loss of subscribers in the company’s 25-year history.

It could have been a lot worse, considering that Netflix management released a forecast for April calling for a loss of two million subscribers during the second quarter.

Netflix may have escaped deeper losses due to the continuing popularity of “Stranger Things,” a sci-fi/horror series that debuted in 2016.

After the series’ fourth season was released in late May, Netflix said, viewers watched a total of 1.3 billion hours of it over the next four weeks, more than any other English-language series in the service’s history.

A less serious loss in subscribers, combined with expectations calling for a return to growth in the July-September period, helped lift Netflix’s battered 7% stock in extended trading after the numbers came in.

ZHB