It looks like the “under-promise, over-deliver,” concept holds.
At a quarterly earnings call on Tuesday, Netflix reported a loss of roughly 970,000 subscribers — much less than the 2 million figure it had predicted in April.
The company reported that revenue grew 9% year-over in Q2, and the company’s stock is up about 12% since the start of the week.
But, it’s trading at about $215.75, which is far below the nearly $600 share price it commanded earlier in the year.
It’s been an interesting time for the streaming company. Netflix reported its first subscriber loss in over 10 years in Q1, blaming password sharing, among other factors, and has also laid off a large number of employees. The streaming giant also faces increased competition from HBO Max, Hulu, AppleTV+, Amazon Prime Video, and more.
Netflix said it plans to shift its strategy to big-name, interesting films that “Hollywood has lost its taste for,” The Atlantic reported last week. The company also recently acquired an animation studio, per The Verge.
Last week, the streaming service said it would partner with Microsoft on the cheaper, ad-supported subscription model, which will likely be rolled out in 2023, per the earnings call.
Reed Hastings, co-CEO of Netflix, said in the call that he was proud of the content Netflix had produced in Q2, like Stranger Things. However, “our excitement is tempered by the less bad results,” he said, regarding the subscriber losses.
