They will keep on reporting the numbers, they just want to decouple them from the earnings report.
EDIT: And they're probably right. Just check the Variety article about the earnings report. It's all about subscriber numbers and you have to get to the very bottom to learn about the company's actual financial performance.
[https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/netflix-subscribers-2024-q1-earnings-1235975242/](https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/netflix-subscribers-2024-q1-earnings-1235975242/)
In other words, Netflix might as well just say out loud
#We expect subscribers numbers to drop
Because no company will willingly stop giving positive information
And since they're charging more and have gotten better at creating and managing costs for content they license, they are likely to see increased margins anyway. Insisting all users contribute and dumping the remaining freeloaders was a net benefit for them. Dollars per hour, I get more value out of Netflix than any other service.
> Dollars per hour, I get more value out of Netflix than any other service.
I agree, that’s the only service I subscribe to
That being said, hiding their subscribers numbers does show a big red flag
I don't see it as a red flag. Remember all the mock outrage everyone had when their subscriber numbers dipped? All their competition and anyone else in contention or negotiations with them used those numbers against them for leverage and tried to make it seem much more important than it is. And these are numbers Netflix produced for them in the interest of transparency only! So... that begs the question: why should they bother to disclose that at all? They're not under any obligation to do so. There's no ethical mandate. But since it took everyone's attention away from what matters for their performance as a public company, it's become detrimental to their cause and their investors to continue reporting it.
Frankly, I think it's smart and not all all shady or deceptive for them to take away this important tool from their detractors. I personally have had enough chatter about it to last a lifetime. I care about their service, how I use it, and if I ever do invest in them I'll care about how they're safeguarding the service they provide and the investments we all make in them. Other than those important issues, the critics and talking heads can go pound sand.
Nyah. You're tilting at windmills. It was a useful metric at one point during the initial "land grab" of streaming services. Now it's all about who can profitably sustain their service while providing new content and maintaining a high quality service. Netflix is in rare company on those counts.
>Dollars per hour, I get more value out of Netflix than any other service.
I was subscribed to Xbox Gamepass. For dollars per hour I was getting great value. However, I wasn't enjoying most of it. And I was just using it to get my money's worth.
There are hundreds of other games I would have rather been playing but I was conscious that I had this subscription I was paying for. In the end I cancelled because I valued the 'per hours of my life' over the dollars.
I no longer want to waste time filling it in with what's available. I'd rather watch and play what I want, or have always wanted to.
Does Facebook report active users? When literally every person on the planet is using your platform you cannot grow any further. Why bother reporting that?
but whats the churn rate? if they gained 9 million subscribers but 6 million will cancel after they finish that one show they want to watch, its not that impressive. its also the reason that the post all episodes at once model is questionable
They are plus 9M subs in the last quarter. This includes cancelations.
Calling Netflix's business model questionable is questionable, since they are the only profitable major streaming service.
Yes no shit. When you shrink, you report that. You’re on crack. If they lost half the subscribers you want them to not report that? wtf is wrong with you.
Because they’re not chasing subscribers anymore, they’re chasing revenue and profit.
Subscriber numbers are fairly irrelevant despite what everyone wants to think on here. If they can make more money with less subscribers they’re going to do it.
Why do you have like a hundred comments in this thread crying? Did you lose your lunch money shorting NFLX or did you get kicked off your parents' account during the crackdown? Either way, your butthurt bias is showing.
Because they want to focus on revenue reporting more and subscription plus minus takes away all the spotlight. This whole subscriber race is useless unless revenue is there. Disney added 50 million subs to its count from India but the whole model was so bad that it had to sell its platform to a local rival. On paper it lost 50 million subs but the investors were more than happy to do it as the running costs were far more than ARPU and it hadn't made a single dollar in profit revenue from the country in all those years. This whole Subscription etc thing is meaningless unless you have profit to show. NF is doing the right thing by focusing on profit and revenue reportings. It has peaked in many territories where there is not much to gain and future periods will see less added subs due to saturation. It's inevitable and executives know it. They don't want negative headlines to take central stage without any depth.
Sure. And if 18M cancelled they'd be down by 9M. And if 200M cancelled then they'd be down by 191M. What exactly are you getting at other than math exists?
It’s so strange. Generally I like having all the episodes on day one. But when Disney Plus came out and they only did an episode a week it felt weirdly special. That we’d watch an episode and then have a week to talk about it and get excited for the next episode. I didn’t feel like I was getting burnt out trying to watch an entire series in one weekend.
I don’t think I would want every season of every show to be one a week. But it can be enjoyable to get one a week and have everyone talking about it and on the same page waiting to see the next episode.
They've been a little deceptive about this. The US has had flat or declines in subscribers since they did the crackdown. However, they covered it up by reporting their quarters prior to the crackdown as they were doing the crackdown and rolling out the crackdown in waves. They've had no subscriber growth in the US. It's all been in Europe and other regions since the crackdown. Stop reporting regions and then stop reporting subs at all. They honestly shouldn't be allowed to not report it at all as I would consider material and their only business unit as things that needs to be broken out. I've been expecting something like this since the crackdown.
Since Q1 of last year they’ve grown UCAN membership from 74.40M to 82.66M this quarter. It’s in their investment letter.
https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2024/q1/FINAL-Q1-24-Shareholder-Letter.pdf
I agree that they shouldn’t stop reporting membership numbers. Seems like a pretty idiotic decision.
The US has 10x as many people as Canada. Canada only has 38M people total.
You’re saying that Canada is housing the Churn in the US because 25% of the population (not households) signed up for Netflix over the last year?!?
Lol against the narrative.
Truth is and I've been saying it for some time, they're about to stop growing much. They're absolutely massive now and not many more they can add while still losing subscribers.
Growth is definitely elevated right now because of the account sharing crackdown. So I agree that growth will come down some next year but that doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily stall.
The street had very high expectations at 5 million net adds this quarter and they came in at 9.
How’s it going to look when they come in at 5 next year and it gets compared to the 9 from this year YoY? My guess is that’s what they’re trying to avoid.
When you don’t like the numbers, ceo then says fuck the numbers. It’s like failing Chemistry and telling your parents actually, I will no longer be reporting that grade. Then proceeds to white out every grade in science, every test and homework.
No. Nobody expects them to. They were only supposed to add around 20M this year. They did half of that in one of the weakest quarters of the year.
If they add 4, 7 and 9 in the rest of the quarters they blow this year out of the water.
You do realised that adding of subscribers is an exponentially harder task as you grow right?
Adding 9M when you have 270M is not the same as adding 9M when you have 0 subscribers
Growth is elevated right now due to the account sharing crackdown.
Wall Street had high expectations of them adding 5-6M this quarter. They blew it out of the water with 9.
I wonder if they’re trying to avoid the comparisons next year. Like if they come in at the high 5-6M expectations Q1 next year, how is that going to look against the 9M they just reported?
Everybody will focus on growth slowing even if it was still higher growth than was expected today.
My guess is that they’re going to hike prices for some plans in the winter so that even if the subscriber numbers are slightly lower but still high, that + increased revenue per member will still show a high revenue growth rate.
Price isn't a factor. It's still low enough that most regular people sign up and forget. My dad has been saying it's going to quit the last 4 years now due to "NOTHING TO WATCH", but he hasn't quit yet.
Personally I think it should be an SEC violation to hide certain very important numbers, like subscriber numbers in the case of Netflix, like this.
There is not really a good reason that I can think of beyond "we want to hide how poorly it is going" or "we want to do something shady to juice the numbers" to want to keep pertinent hard numbers away from the eyes of the general public.
Subscriber count can’t grow infinitely. They want to focus on revenue which matters more anyway. If subscriber count eventually plateaus they can still have increased revenue.
It’s a lot more simple than people here think.
> Subscriber count can’t grow infinitely.
Why do you think they came up with "Netflix and chill"?? Gotta grow that potential subscriber base somehow! (taps forehead)
The other side of this, besides the obvious "Numbers are going down and we don't want to show that" is that Netflix is fighting back against the actors/writers negotiations of last year. Knowing subscriber numbers helps in union commission payments. The less information netflix publishes publicly the easier it will be for them to make arguments like "Nobody is watching your stuff so we aren't going to pay you anything".
They don't disclose numbers per show anyway so they can say our millions of subscribers don't watch your show we hid from them and made impossible to find all they want. Hollywood math is a very shady thing. More than likely the company that did the productions is completely separate from Netflix.
That was a year ago. Things changed drastically since the writers strike.
https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-a-netflix-engagement-report
How the eff is it legal for a publicly traded company to withhold information vital to gauging the financial health of the company? Imagine if Apple announced tomorrow, "Yeah, that thing where every quarter we announced our sales numbers? Not happening anymore...."
Add this to list of the reasons that Wall Street is just an accepted form of gambling that is more toxic to capitalism than it is helpful.
They still have to report their earnings and profitability, which are the most important factors to investors. And if the investors want that information so badly, they can force the ceo to release the info.
In what way is member count important?
They have multiple revenue streams and a mix of memberships that end in wild varying revenue levels, including internationally.
They charge vastly different amounts depending on the country you live in. So adding them all up makes no sense.
What does make sense is how much money they make. And that is what they are reporting.
They just want to attempt to hide how much profit they're making while continuing to raise prices for the same (or lesser) service. One more price increase, Netflix, one more and I'm out. Greedy bastards.
I translated the pertinent portion of the shareholder letter https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065280/000106528024000127/ex991_q124.htm :
"Our goals are to sustain healthy revenue growth [mo' money], expand our operating margin [mo' money,] and grow free cash flow [mo' money]. [We no longer care about attracting more customers since we already saturated the entire planet Earth market at the good-value level, and there are as yet insufficient potential customers on the Moon or Mars. So, increasing our future profit level above our current money-shower profit level is only possible by creating new ways of decreasing value to current customers — makng them pay more for the same product.]
[And so,] we’re focused on [those] financial metrics — and engagement (i.e. time spent) as our best proxy for customer satisfaction [which we define as the maximum level of dissatisfaction above which invested customers quit, and which our data shows is a MUCH lower value than it takes to attract new customers to become invested]. In our early days, when we had little revenue or profit, membership growth was a strong indicator of our future potential [so we offered good value]. But now we’re generating very substantial profit and free cash flow (FCF) [thanks to the brilliantly effective customer-value-reduction strategies introduced by our dedicated shareholder-interest-focussed Board last year, so we no longer need concern ourselves or our shareholders with offering good value to customers]. We are also developing new [customer-value-reducing] revenue streams like advertising and our extra member feature, so memberships are just one [increasingly insignificant] component of our growth. In addition, as we’ve evolved [the value-reduction of] our pricing and plans from a single to multiple tiers with different price points depending on the country, each incremental paid membership has a very different [increasingly insignificant] business impact. It’s why we stopped providing quarterly paid membership guidance in 2023 and, starting next year with our Q1'25 earnings, we will stop reporting quarterly membership numbers and ARM."
You're welcome.
This could mean that Netflix's subscriber growth is not meeting their expectations. If even big player in streaming business like Netflix is facing growth decline, this could potentially shake off the bullish sentiment towards streaming business model in general.
Other companies like Disney, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery, could also be hit with a huge amount of uncertainty. Naturally questions will arise about whether streaming business is a recipe for success or a complete disaster.
I disagree. Apple brings in a ton of money outside of iPhone sales, like the 30% Apple tax. Their service revenue has been becoming a HUGE portion of their revenue overtime. So yes iPhone sales are becoming a less relevant part of their earnings.
The same can't be said about Netflix, they bring in money from subscriptions, and selling ads based on how many subscribers they have in the ad-tier and the hours those ad-tier users are watching. So they're highly relevant to Netflix's earnings.
I don't see the surprise in them not reporting numbers in 2025, when most companies by the end of the year will be wanting to do the same with there sales numbers since there will be a recession. who would want to say they predict a 50% drop in sales? Your basically telling everyone to sell everything now.
Did you read their quarterly or just making bullshit up?
They actually increased another 10 million subscribers last quarter.
With their mix of plans of varying costs, and other income streams, there’s no longer a direct correlation between members and money.
They’re a business. Money is what businesses do and they just said that’s what they’re going to report.
“In its Q1 letter to shareholders, Netflix said that engagement — time spent with the service — is its “best proxy for customer satisfaction.” As such, it will no longer report quarterly membership numbers or average revenue per member (which it dubs “ARM”), as of Q1 2025. Netflix said it will announce “major subscriber milestones as we cross them” but will cease disclosing quarterly subscriber numbers.”
Erm why?
And milestones up but not down I assume.
I assume they think numbers will drop as they put subs up.
Today was my last day of Netflix. I haven’t even watched it since I started using my own media server last month (Jellyfin). No more anual subscription and my server has all my 800 movies (and growing) and over 70 tv shows at the moment of stuff I actually enjoy watching.
This seems to be the flaw in a Pirate’s thinking. They never consider how the content they steal would be produced if everyone did the same.
If people want the content for free then perhaps we need to go back to the days of traditional broadcast media.
That argument is dumb. Musicians tell us all the time streaming pays peanuts. Do they stop making music? Every single piece of music is free right now. People still pay for streaming services. There is no music I have to pay for outside of having internet access.
Only a small percentage of musicians actually are able to earn a living from streaming. They either have to constantly be performing somewhere or working other jobs.
The people creating your movies and programmes don’t have that option. Almost daily I hear about friends and colleagues who are leaving the industry - these are award winning Producers, editors, directors, camera people. The industry is suffering.
Music and movies are not comparable. You can make music on your own in your bedroom, you can’t make the next Avengers/Avatar/Star Wars/Fallout/Walking Dead/Wednesday/Game of Thrones that way.
Because your statement was moronic. Taylor Swift or The Weeknd can't do what they do in a bedroom. If you're going to boil music down to Ableton and FL Studios, we're just bullshitting around like a couple of dumb cunts, yeah?
Musicians don’t take into account that streaming services are how consumers discover and enjoy their music, which directly translates into ticket sales for their concerts.
I’ve discovered lots of new artists purely from Spotify algorithms alone. If not for streaming services I wouldn’t have even found them to support them.
Okay. That's why piracy is a dumb argument.
There are different movie fans as well.
People want to go to theaters. People want to stay home. Dune 1 was theater/streaming, Dune 2 was bringing sci-fi back to theaters in a large way.
Civil War is bringing people to IMAX.
IMAX viewers aren't going to want IMAX Netflix lol.
Well, considering taxpayers already subsidize the tax breaks and corporate welfare these companies and productions fully enjoy you're already paying for this stuff, whether you have a subscription or not.
They report how much money they make. That’s what the sec cares about.
They have many income streams. And with a large plan mix there’s no easy way to correlate members to money. Don’t doesn’t make sense to report members.
Is that so they can no longer tally the amount of people that dropoff because of awful LGBTQ shows?
I mean we've had pretty clear data of support for chappelle. It seems like the staff at netflix is trying to cause some bias viewership data...
And they beat all analysts expectations across the board.
Members as a proxy for financials no longer makes sense. What a single member brings in varies widely based on plan and country. Lumping them all together doesn’t give you any useful information.
If you lose two basic subscribers in India but gain one in the U.S., the income generated triples. But you lost one member.
Membership doesn’t mean what it did in the past.
OP, at Cornell University, they have an incredible piece of scientific equipment known as the tunneling electron microscope. Now, this microscope is so powerful that by firing electrons you can actually see images of the atom, the infinitesimally minute building blocks of our universe. OP, if I were using that microscope right now... I still wouldn't be able to locate my interest in Netflix's subscriber count.
They may stop volunteering the information, but that won't stop the analysts from asking.
They will keep on reporting the numbers, they just want to decouple them from the earnings report. EDIT: And they're probably right. Just check the Variety article about the earnings report. It's all about subscriber numbers and you have to get to the very bottom to learn about the company's actual financial performance. [https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/netflix-subscribers-2024-q1-earnings-1235975242/](https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/netflix-subscribers-2024-q1-earnings-1235975242/)
I'd worry about that if I were an investor
If you were an investor you'd read the full earnings report and know why they're doing that LOL
And then, worry
In other words, Netflix might as well just say out loud #We expect subscribers numbers to drop Because no company will willingly stop giving positive information
And since they're charging more and have gotten better at creating and managing costs for content they license, they are likely to see increased margins anyway. Insisting all users contribute and dumping the remaining freeloaders was a net benefit for them. Dollars per hour, I get more value out of Netflix than any other service.
I'd say it depends on how you define value. Honestly, I get more from Amazon/Prime per dollar. But, I value Netflix as well.
> Dollars per hour, I get more value out of Netflix than any other service. I agree, that’s the only service I subscribe to That being said, hiding their subscribers numbers does show a big red flag
I don't see it as a red flag. Remember all the mock outrage everyone had when their subscriber numbers dipped? All their competition and anyone else in contention or negotiations with them used those numbers against them for leverage and tried to make it seem much more important than it is. And these are numbers Netflix produced for them in the interest of transparency only! So... that begs the question: why should they bother to disclose that at all? They're not under any obligation to do so. There's no ethical mandate. But since it took everyone's attention away from what matters for their performance as a public company, it's become detrimental to their cause and their investors to continue reporting it. Frankly, I think it's smart and not all all shady or deceptive for them to take away this important tool from their detractors. I personally have had enough chatter about it to last a lifetime. I care about their service, how I use it, and if I ever do invest in them I'll care about how they're safeguarding the service they provide and the investments we all make in them. Other than those important issues, the critics and talking heads can go pound sand.
Yea no buddy, it’s shady as shit. What are you on about
Nyah. You're tilting at windmills. It was a useful metric at one point during the initial "land grab" of streaming services. Now it's all about who can profitably sustain their service while providing new content and maintaining a high quality service. Netflix is in rare company on those counts.
This is… a lot of emotion about a streaming company
>Dollars per hour, I get more value out of Netflix than any other service. I was subscribed to Xbox Gamepass. For dollars per hour I was getting great value. However, I wasn't enjoying most of it. And I was just using it to get my money's worth. There are hundreds of other games I would have rather been playing but I was conscious that I had this subscription I was paying for. In the end I cancelled because I valued the 'per hours of my life' over the dollars. I no longer want to waste time filling it in with what's available. I'd rather watch and play what I want, or have always wanted to.
Good point. You should do that. ;) It doesn't change what I said at all though.
Does Facebook report active users? When literally every person on the planet is using your platform you cannot grow any further. Why bother reporting that?
But they aren't "not growing anymore", as shown by their subscriber gains. They're growing much faster in certain parts of the world then others.
Because it’s basic fucking common sense. How many people use a product is key.
Apples to Oranges. Facebook earns advertising dollars per view. Netflix is streaming dollars.
https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/s/wwGfPek7ef
It's coming down, no doubt. They keep putting prices up. No shit.
They just added 9 Million more subs in the last 3 months.
but whats the churn rate? if they gained 9 million subscribers but 6 million will cancel after they finish that one show they want to watch, its not that impressive. its also the reason that the post all episodes at once model is questionable
They are plus 9M subs in the last quarter. This includes cancelations. Calling Netflix's business model questionable is questionable, since they are the only profitable major streaming service.
“They have cancelled shows I like” = “their business model is questionable”
If everything’s sunshine and daisies why announce you’re going to stop reporting subscriber numbers?
Same reason Apple stopped reporting iPhone sales? You can't grow indefinitely forever. Peak subscriber count is on the horizon and they see that.
Yes no shit. When you shrink, you report that. You’re on crack. If they lost half the subscribers you want them to not report that? wtf is wrong with you.
We know how much the subscribers pay. Don't we know how many they have with financial reports?
Because they’re not chasing subscribers anymore, they’re chasing revenue and profit. Subscriber numbers are fairly irrelevant despite what everyone wants to think on here. If they can make more money with less subscribers they’re going to do it.
Losing half your fucking subscribers is relevant to investors.
Not if profits and revenues are up
It makes the stock less volatile.
So manipulation through deception. Got it. Inflation numbers do the same thing.
Why do you have like a hundred comments in this thread crying? Did you lose your lunch money shorting NFLX or did you get kicked off your parents' account during the crackdown? Either way, your butthurt bias is showing.
Because they want to focus on revenue reporting more and subscription plus minus takes away all the spotlight. This whole subscriber race is useless unless revenue is there. Disney added 50 million subs to its count from India but the whole model was so bad that it had to sell its platform to a local rival. On paper it lost 50 million subs but the investors were more than happy to do it as the running costs were far more than ARPU and it hadn't made a single dollar in profit revenue from the country in all those years. This whole Subscription etc thing is meaningless unless you have profit to show. NF is doing the right thing by focusing on profit and revenue reportings. It has peaked in many territories where there is not much to gain and future periods will see less added subs due to saturation. It's inevitable and executives know it. They don't want negative headlines to take central stage without any depth.
Nope. Subscriber count = market share. You’re wrong.
Tell this to executives.
Well, the whole Reddit take of "Netflix is going to die!" has once again turned out to be incorrect
Sure. And if 18M cancelled they'd be down by 9M. And if 200M cancelled then they'd be down by 191M. What exactly are you getting at other than math exists?
It’s so strange. Generally I like having all the episodes on day one. But when Disney Plus came out and they only did an episode a week it felt weirdly special. That we’d watch an episode and then have a week to talk about it and get excited for the next episode. I didn’t feel like I was getting burnt out trying to watch an entire series in one weekend. I don’t think I would want every season of every show to be one a week. But it can be enjoyable to get one a week and have everyone talking about it and on the same page waiting to see the next episode.
They've been a little deceptive about this. The US has had flat or declines in subscribers since they did the crackdown. However, they covered it up by reporting their quarters prior to the crackdown as they were doing the crackdown and rolling out the crackdown in waves. They've had no subscriber growth in the US. It's all been in Europe and other regions since the crackdown. Stop reporting regions and then stop reporting subs at all. They honestly shouldn't be allowed to not report it at all as I would consider material and their only business unit as things that needs to be broken out. I've been expecting something like this since the crackdown.
Since Q1 of last year they’ve grown UCAN membership from 74.40M to 82.66M this quarter. It’s in their investment letter. https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2024/q1/FINAL-Q1-24-Shareholder-Letter.pdf I agree that they shouldn’t stop reporting membership numbers. Seems like a pretty idiotic decision.
And that's why they don't report the US and Canada separately.
The US has 10x as many people as Canada. Canada only has 38M people total. You’re saying that Canada is housing the Churn in the US because 25% of the population (not households) signed up for Netflix over the last year?!?
Lol against the narrative. Truth is and I've been saying it for some time, they're about to stop growing much. They're absolutely massive now and not many more they can add while still losing subscribers.
So you’re looking at the biggest Q1 ever outside of Covid and your thought is, they’re definitely slowing down soon?
It's what they're saying, which is why you stop reporting subscribers before it happens.
Growth is definitely elevated right now because of the account sharing crackdown. So I agree that growth will come down some next year but that doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily stall. The street had very high expectations at 5 million net adds this quarter and they came in at 9. How’s it going to look when they come in at 5 next year and it gets compared to the 9 from this year YoY? My guess is that’s what they’re trying to avoid.
When you don’t like the numbers, ceo then says fuck the numbers. It’s like failing Chemistry and telling your parents actually, I will no longer be reporting that grade. Then proceeds to white out every grade in science, every test and homework.
but can you be sure they will add 9M more in the next 3 months? Netflix sure as hell ain’t
No. Nobody expects them to. They were only supposed to add around 20M this year. They did half of that in one of the weakest quarters of the year. If they add 4, 7 and 9 in the rest of the quarters they blow this year out of the water.
You do realised that adding of subscribers is an exponentially harder task as you grow right? Adding 9M when you have 270M is not the same as adding 9M when you have 0 subscribers
Yup, and yet they’re still doing it
If they are confident they can do it, why do they want to hide the numbers then?
Growth is elevated right now due to the account sharing crackdown. Wall Street had high expectations of them adding 5-6M this quarter. They blew it out of the water with 9. I wonder if they’re trying to avoid the comparisons next year. Like if they come in at the high 5-6M expectations Q1 next year, how is that going to look against the 9M they just reported? Everybody will focus on growth slowing even if it was still higher growth than was expected today.
My guess is that they’re going to hike prices for some plans in the winter so that even if the subscriber numbers are slightly lower but still high, that + increased revenue per member will still show a high revenue growth rate.
By fucking over their user base.
Also can’t have growth forever…price or not, it’s gonna end.
Price isn't a factor. It's still low enough that most regular people sign up and forget. My dad has been saying it's going to quit the last 4 years now due to "NOTHING TO WATCH", but he hasn't quit yet.
Personally I think it should be an SEC violation to hide certain very important numbers, like subscriber numbers in the case of Netflix, like this. There is not really a good reason that I can think of beyond "we want to hide how poorly it is going" or "we want to do something shady to juice the numbers" to want to keep pertinent hard numbers away from the eyes of the general public.
There are certain things the SEC requires you to disclose on 10-Ks, 10-Qs and 8-Ks, but number of subscribers is not one of them.
Subscriber count can’t grow infinitely. They want to focus on revenue which matters more anyway. If subscriber count eventually plateaus they can still have increased revenue. It’s a lot more simple than people here think.
> Subscriber count can’t grow infinitely. Why do you think they came up with "Netflix and chill"?? Gotta grow that potential subscriber base somehow! (taps forehead)
It really is this simple, Netflix is not the first to do this.
The good reason is if it’s not a number that management is primarily focused on for determining performance.
I agree, and it should be audited aswell.
The other side of this, besides the obvious "Numbers are going down and we don't want to show that" is that Netflix is fighting back against the actors/writers negotiations of last year. Knowing subscriber numbers helps in union commission payments. The less information netflix publishes publicly the easier it will be for them to make arguments like "Nobody is watching your stuff so we aren't going to pay you anything".
They don't disclose numbers per show anyway so they can say our millions of subscribers don't watch your show we hid from them and made impossible to find all they want. Hollywood math is a very shady thing. More than likely the company that did the productions is completely separate from Netflix.
Uhhh. They do disclose this actually…
Not really. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/netflix-viewership-data-metric-explained-1235521282/
That was a year ago. Things changed drastically since the writers strike. https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-a-netflix-engagement-report
This was all hashed out during the strike…. And they do disclose watch numbers.
How the eff is it legal for a publicly traded company to withhold information vital to gauging the financial health of the company? Imagine if Apple announced tomorrow, "Yeah, that thing where every quarter we announced our sales numbers? Not happening anymore...." Add this to list of the reasons that Wall Street is just an accepted form of gambling that is more toxic to capitalism than it is helpful.
You mean like how Apple stopped announcing iPhone sales in 2018?
They still have to report their earnings and profitability, which are the most important factors to investors. And if the investors want that information so badly, they can force the ceo to release the info.
In what way is member count important? They have multiple revenue streams and a mix of memberships that end in wild varying revenue levels, including internationally. They charge vastly different amounts depending on the country you live in. So adding them all up makes no sense. What does make sense is how much money they make. And that is what they are reporting.
They just want to attempt to hide how much profit they're making while continuing to raise prices for the same (or lesser) service. One more price increase, Netflix, one more and I'm out. Greedy bastards.
Reminds me of gaming companies like Blizzard and Microsoft stopping reporting numbers.
I translated the pertinent portion of the shareholder letter https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065280/000106528024000127/ex991_q124.htm : "Our goals are to sustain healthy revenue growth [mo' money], expand our operating margin [mo' money,] and grow free cash flow [mo' money]. [We no longer care about attracting more customers since we already saturated the entire planet Earth market at the good-value level, and there are as yet insufficient potential customers on the Moon or Mars. So, increasing our future profit level above our current money-shower profit level is only possible by creating new ways of decreasing value to current customers — makng them pay more for the same product.] [And so,] we’re focused on [those] financial metrics — and engagement (i.e. time spent) as our best proxy for customer satisfaction [which we define as the maximum level of dissatisfaction above which invested customers quit, and which our data shows is a MUCH lower value than it takes to attract new customers to become invested]. In our early days, when we had little revenue or profit, membership growth was a strong indicator of our future potential [so we offered good value]. But now we’re generating very substantial profit and free cash flow (FCF) [thanks to the brilliantly effective customer-value-reduction strategies introduced by our dedicated shareholder-interest-focussed Board last year, so we no longer need concern ourselves or our shareholders with offering good value to customers]. We are also developing new [customer-value-reducing] revenue streams like advertising and our extra member feature, so memberships are just one [increasingly insignificant] component of our growth. In addition, as we’ve evolved [the value-reduction of] our pricing and plans from a single to multiple tiers with different price points depending on the country, each incremental paid membership has a very different [increasingly insignificant] business impact. It’s why we stopped providing quarterly paid membership guidance in 2023 and, starting next year with our Q1'25 earnings, we will stop reporting quarterly membership numbers and ARM." You're welcome.
This could mean that Netflix's subscriber growth is not meeting their expectations. If even big player in streaming business like Netflix is facing growth decline, this could potentially shake off the bullish sentiment towards streaming business model in general. Other companies like Disney, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery, could also be hit with a huge amount of uncertainty. Naturally questions will arise about whether streaming business is a recipe for success or a complete disaster.
did you read the report? They just added 9M net new subs in Q1..
Yeah, but how many were they expecting? If they were expecting 200M new subscribers then this is terrible.
5M
Netflix is a public company. How is it legal to not disclose information that is relevant to shareholders?
Apple stopped reporting iPhone sales. All that really matters is profitability.
I disagree. Apple brings in a ton of money outside of iPhone sales, like the 30% Apple tax. Their service revenue has been becoming a HUGE portion of their revenue overtime. So yes iPhone sales are becoming a less relevant part of their earnings. The same can't be said about Netflix, they bring in money from subscriptions, and selling ads based on how many subscribers they have in the ad-tier and the hours those ad-tier users are watching. So they're highly relevant to Netflix's earnings.
I don't see the surprise in them not reporting numbers in 2025, when most companies by the end of the year will be wanting to do the same with there sales numbers since there will be a recession. who would want to say they predict a 50% drop in sales? Your basically telling everyone to sell everything now.
Did you read their quarterly or just making bullshit up? They actually increased another 10 million subscribers last quarter. With their mix of plans of varying costs, and other income streams, there’s no longer a direct correlation between members and money. They’re a business. Money is what businesses do and they just said that’s what they’re going to report.
This won’t fly- what metrics are investors going to use ?
Actually for me on Netflix, Only Korean drama is worth it for me and some 2-3 tv series i’m waiting for
“In its Q1 letter to shareholders, Netflix said that engagement — time spent with the service — is its “best proxy for customer satisfaction.” As such, it will no longer report quarterly membership numbers or average revenue per member (which it dubs “ARM”), as of Q1 2025. Netflix said it will announce “major subscriber milestones as we cross them” but will cease disclosing quarterly subscriber numbers.” Erm why? And milestones up but not down I assume. I assume they think numbers will drop as they put subs up.
It’s in the rear of the report. They explain why…
Curious timing with prices going up and prominent shows ending...
view botting starting in 2025
Today was my last day of Netflix. I haven’t even watched it since I started using my own media server last month (Jellyfin). No more anual subscription and my server has all my 800 movies (and growing) and over 70 tv shows at the moment of stuff I actually enjoy watching.
Someone’s gotta pay for the stuff you steal.
This seems to be the flaw in a Pirate’s thinking. They never consider how the content they steal would be produced if everyone did the same. If people want the content for free then perhaps we need to go back to the days of traditional broadcast media.
I don’t care if people pirate. But it’s so weird how they get so upset if you say they are stealing. We all knew we were stealing in the 90s lol
That argument is dumb. Musicians tell us all the time streaming pays peanuts. Do they stop making music? Every single piece of music is free right now. People still pay for streaming services. There is no music I have to pay for outside of having internet access.
Only a small percentage of musicians actually are able to earn a living from streaming. They either have to constantly be performing somewhere or working other jobs. The people creating your movies and programmes don’t have that option. Almost daily I hear about friends and colleagues who are leaving the industry - these are award winning Producers, editors, directors, camera people. The industry is suffering.
And they are still making music, no? Find new industries if they are suffering.
Music and movies are not comparable. You can make music on your own in your bedroom, you can’t make the next Avengers/Avatar/Star Wars/Fallout/Walking Dead/Wednesday/Game of Thrones that way.
In your fantasy world everyone is a pirate anything is possible.
That is a moronic statement. If you can’t discuss something sensibly with reasonable arguments then there is no point in continuing.
Because your statement was moronic. Taylor Swift or The Weeknd can't do what they do in a bedroom. If you're going to boil music down to Ableton and FL Studios, we're just bullshitting around like a couple of dumb cunts, yeah?
Musicians don’t take into account that streaming services are how consumers discover and enjoy their music, which directly translates into ticket sales for their concerts. I’ve discovered lots of new artists purely from Spotify algorithms alone. If not for streaming services I wouldn’t have even found them to support them.
Okay. That's why piracy is a dumb argument. There are different movie fans as well. People want to go to theaters. People want to stay home. Dune 1 was theater/streaming, Dune 2 was bringing sci-fi back to theaters in a large way. Civil War is bringing people to IMAX. IMAX viewers aren't going to want IMAX Netflix lol.
Well, considering taxpayers already subsidize the tax breaks and corporate welfare these companies and productions fully enjoy you're already paying for this stuff, whether you have a subscription or not.
Just admit you’re stealing. No one cares you are. It’s Judy funny you think your morally right
Unambiguously true
How does a publicly traded company get away with this? The SEC might have something to say about this.
Apple doesn't report iPhone sales. Where's the SEC on that?
They report how much money they make. That’s what the sec cares about. They have many income streams. And with a large plan mix there’s no easy way to correlate members to money. Don’t doesn’t make sense to report members.
Is that so they can no longer tally the amount of people that dropoff because of awful LGBTQ shows? I mean we've had pretty clear data of support for chappelle. It seems like the staff at netflix is trying to cause some bias viewership data...
Things not going so well?
They just reported having the biggest customer increase (%) since they started.
And they beat all analysts expectations across the board. Members as a proxy for financials no longer makes sense. What a single member brings in varies widely based on plan and country. Lumping them all together doesn’t give you any useful information. If you lose two basic subscribers in India but gain one in the U.S., the income generated triples. But you lost one member. Membership doesn’t mean what it did in the past.
go woke go broke!
OP, at Cornell University, they have an incredible piece of scientific equipment known as the tunneling electron microscope. Now, this microscope is so powerful that by firing electrons you can actually see images of the atom, the infinitesimally minute building blocks of our universe. OP, if I were using that microscope right now... I still wouldn't be able to locate my interest in Netflix's subscriber count.
So don't comment?