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After losing 200,000 small subscribers out of a total of more than 220 million, Netflix plunged into the stock market on April 20 and must now face a complaint from its shareholders. Capucine Cousin, author of a book on the saga of the video on demand giant, explains the reasons for these strong reactions.
In April, Netflix experienced a stock market crash. In question: a loss of 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, out of a total of around 221 million, while the platform had planned at the end of last year to gain 2.5 million during this period. And some of its shareholders have lodged a complaint once morest the firmaccusing him of having concealed that “subscriber acquisition growth was slowing.” Capucine Cousin, economic journalist and author of the book Netflix & Cie: behind the scenes of a (r)evolution» (Armand Colin 2018), analyzes the situation.
With a loss of only 200,000 subscribers, how do you explain Netflix’s fall on the stock market, but also the complaint from its shareholders?
It’s true, we have the impression that losing 200,000 subscribers is very little compared to the 220 million that Netflix now has worldwide. The degree of requirement of the shareholders has become very important because the streaming platform has really climbed on the stock exchange in the last two years. It is one of those companies that have taken advantage of the confinement linked to the pandemic and forced teleworking. As a result, many people had taken out Netflix subscriptions. We saw its number of users climb in the first…
