{"id":507574,"date":"2021-07-21T07:37:09","date_gmt":"2021-07-21T05:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=507574"},"modified":"2021-07-21T07:37:09","modified_gmt":"2021-07-21T05:37:09","slug":"netflix-executives-dismiss-growth-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/media\/507574\/netflix-executives-dismiss-growth-concerns\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix executives dismiss growth concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Netflix Inc\u2019s year got off to the slowest start in nearly a decade, executives dismissed concerns about sagging growth and reiterated their confidence in the streaming giant\u2019s long-term prospects.<\/p>\n

The company has suffered a slowdown after pandemic lockdowns sent its membership soaring in 2020, but there\u2019s still plenty of room to grow, Netflix said in remarks after posting its second-quarter results. And the industry remains in the relatively early stages of shifting from traditional television to streaming services, they said.<\/p>\n

The company is also looking to new offerings such as video games to keep subscribers loyal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s still a bit of choppiness to our growth,\u201d chief financial officer Spencer Neumann said in a pretaped interview with Nidhi Gupta of Fidelity Management. \u201cOverall, the business is performing well.\u201d<\/p>\n

After shares initially tumbled 6.6% in the wake of Netflix\u2019s earnings report, investors regained their confidence and sent the stock up more than 1% in late trading.<\/p>\n

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The company added 1.54 million customers in the second quarter. While that was above the 1.12 million forecast by analysts – and Netflix\u2019s own estimate of 1 million – it\u2019s a far cry from the company\u2019s previous growth.<\/p>\n

Paired with its additions in the first quarter, Netflix had added about 5.5 million customers – the worst performance since the first half of 2013, when the service was operating in fewer than half as many countries.<\/p>\n

Netflix also forecast Tuesday that it would add 3.5 million in the third quarter, well shy of the 5.86 million analysts had projected. With the pandemic subsiding, customers are watching less TV this year on average than they did a year ago, the company said.<\/p>\n

Netflix\u2019s top leaders acknowledged the sluggishness in 2021 while attempting to redirect attention to other numbers and new businesses that would ensure growth in the years ahead. Netflix\u2019s users are canceling at a lower rate than they did before the pandemic, and its service has only penetrated 20% of all broadband homes in the world.<\/p>\n

Netflix, the world\u2019s largest paid streaming service, had warned that 2021 would start slowly after record-seeing growth a year ago. The company signed up nearly 26 million new customers in the first half of 2020 as people stuck at home during the pandemic flocked to its movies and shows. Netflix surged 67% in 2020 as a result.<\/p>\n

But the slowdown in growth has been sharper than most investors anticipated. The stock was down 2.3% through the first six months of 2021, the worst first half since 2016.<\/p>\n

Two regions – Latin America and Asia-Pacific – accounted for almost all of Netflix\u2019s subscriber growth in the second quarter. Those are the company\u2019s two smallest regions. The service lost 430,000 customers in its largest region, the US and Canada, the first time it has shrunk at home in two years.<\/p>\n

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Netflix blamed its slow growth on a combination of factors: the pandemic, seasonality and a light slate of popular shows. The service had fewer big shows to offer in the first half of this year, due in part to production delays in the early months of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

The audience for two of its most popular shows, the caper drama \u201cLupin\u201d and the reality dating program \u201cToo Hot to Handle,\u201d also fell from previous seasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cCovid-related production delays in 2020 have led to a lighter first half of 2021 slate that will build through the course of the year,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n

Netflix\u2019s upcoming releases include new seasons of \u201cLa Casa de Papel\u201d and \u201cThe Witcher,\u201d two popular shows. The company signed up just 2.2 million new customers in last year\u2019s third quarter.<\/p>\n

Netflix is also looking to video games as a lure for current and potential customers. The company will add games to its streaming service in the next 12 months at no additional cost to its customers, and its first games will be designed for mobile devices. It will start as a test, but the effort still represents an expansion into a whole new type of entertainment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are thinking about it as a core part of our subscription offering,\u201d chief product officer Greg Peters said Tuesday. Netflix will both develop games in-house and license games from outside studios, as it does with film and TV.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t view gaming – or other new initiatives like podcasts and live events – as substantial new businesses. They are ways of drawing more people into its main service.<\/p>\n

More Competition<\/strong><\/p>\n

Curiosity about gaming supplanted the usual litany of analyst questions about its rivals. Netflix now faces greater competition in streaming video from Walt Disney Co, AT&T Inc\u2019s WarnerMedia and Apple Inc, among others.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s share of audience demand for original series online has dipped as new competitors have offered more shows.<\/p>\n

But Netflix reiterated it is unfazed by competition because it believes the larger market for online entertainment will continue to grow. It also expressed little interest in large-scale acquisitions like Amazon.com Inc.\u2019s deal for the studio MGM.<\/p>\n

\u201cHigh engagement gives the company pricing power and should quell concerns over competition,\u201d Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Geetha Ranganathan and Kevin Near said in a report.<\/p>\n

Even as Netflix\u2019s customer growth has slowed, the company has boosted its sales with price increases.<\/p>\n

Revenue for the second quarter rose 19% to $7.34 billion, just above analysts\u2019 estimates of $7.32 billion. Earnings grew to $2.97 a share, shy of the $3.14 a share analysts predicted. This quarter, the company forecasts profit of $2.55 a share, ahead of estimates, with revenue meeting Wall Street projections of $7.48 billion.<\/p>\n

The company initiated a program of stock repurchases last quarter and indicated it would continue to buy back more stock in the future.<\/p>\n

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Read: Netflix plans to offer video games in push beyond films, TV<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After Netflix Inc\u2019s year got off to the slowest start in nearly a decade, executives dismissed concerns about sagging growth and reiterated their confidence in the streaming giant\u2019s long-term prospects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":443470,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5554],"tags":[26,263],"class_list":["post-507574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-headline","tag-netflix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507594,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507574\/revisions\/507594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}