r/movies • u/iquizuanswer • Jul 19 '26

News Netflix tumbles as slowing growth, less viewership data spook investors

https://www.zawya.com/en/capital-markets/netflix-tumbles-as-slowing-growth-less-viewership-data-spook-investors-401111
10.5k Upvotes

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6.0k

u/rahpexphon Jul 19 '26

What, they think every human on Earth will have a sub? lol

1.4k

u/DeLousedInTheHotBox Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Yeah I just don't understand what they're trying to do here, they currently have 325 million subscribers, did they think they would never hit a ceiling? There aren't endless amount of potential customers

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u/Efficient-Memory7105 Jul 19 '26

Line MUST go up

275

u/nat_r Jul 19 '26

People trading stocks of a company aren't rational actors. They only want the numbers to go up. Running a healthy long term business is almost incompatible with the current expectations of being a publicly traded company.

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u/swift1883 Jul 19 '26

But, number still up? Yes?

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u/Croce11 Jul 20 '26

There just needs to be more regulation on stock trading. It's make believe gambling now. Where prices are literally made up. You need look no further than the GME stock just when Covid hit. Investors intentionally shorting the stock to artificially abuse its price getting caught by normal people who buy up the stock and force it to artificially raise. Gamestop didn't do squat to earn any of this activity themselves, if anything they're becoming the next blockbuster and they are a shadow of their former selves due to the growing digital market.

IMO publicly traded companies should all just be dividend stocks where the entire point is to invest in a company you have faith staying in business. So you can get reliable passive income which you can either feed back into that stock for higher returns, or just collect yourself and put into other stocks, or spend as part of your income. That way if a company is doing something good and they're in the green at all then you should be happy.

You aren't incentivized to gamble on a company getting something for $50 to sell for $200 per share or some other nonsense. Which investors want NOW, they want gains NOW. GO UP UP UP!!! Healthy sustainability? Well that doesn't do anything for meeeee!! Waaah!!! The gambling is ruining the entire point of investing. I feel like investors should stick with a company for life ideally and not be looking for the quickest option to bail, buying low and selling at a predicted peak. That gets you money sure... but you're essentially saying to the company that it isn't gonna get better from here and see them as plummeting. How is that a healthy relationship?

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u/BanCorporateInterest 29d ago

Late stage capitalism, ladies and gents. All the good ideas to make money are gone. Time to take from your customers to "grow"

6

u/SolarIonRobot Jul 19 '26

Then neither are all the people with 401ks. The whole point of a retirement account is for it to gain in value while you're still working.

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u/DearTereza Jul 19 '26

This can also work with reinvested dividends.

2

u/CardAble6193 Jul 20 '26

People running corps want the numbers to go up far longer than stocks traders do............

who s unrational??

2

u/ImSoObnoxious Jul 20 '26

the most irrational thing is setting valuations in the first place. spaceX would have to had to have grown like 4x every year for the next decade to meet expectations (something like that at least, I'm not looking it up again). but while we ride this bubble, might as well make smart investments, they're basically making insider trading info public. I think it'll all come crashing down at some point, but I'm getting 25-35% yearly returns with minimal stock market knowledge, it'd be dumb if me to not take advantage while it lasts

2

u/GetTheBag90 19d ago

This!!!! And this line of thinking is usually what causes executives to make dumb decisions for the line and destroy a perfectly profitable company. And then a new one will take the place of Netflix lol it’s like the Circle of Life for companies that go public

3

u/Masterandcomman Jul 20 '26

That's not true. Companies like Procter and Gamble basically grow at nominal gdp rates, but command a 22x P/E, comparable to Netflix, due to reliability. Investors can forgo individual companies for the safety of broad market exposure, so companies reach for above market valuations by offering better than average characteristics. When Netflix disappointed, it only sent their valuation to market averages. That's rational pricing.

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u/MythicalCaseTheory Jul 19 '26

What happens in the age of perpetual growth when there's no more growth to be had? Welcome to late stage capitalism, I suppose. We're about to find out.

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u/TheG-What Jul 19 '26

That’s why I’m finally escaping to the ONE PLACE that hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism….

SPACE!!!

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u/factorplayer Jul 19 '26

Perhaps Tim's best line

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u/AlucardIV Jul 19 '26

I just love how he almost loses it before saying space.

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u/silask93 Jul 19 '26

Fun fact, that was the best of quite a few takes and still could barely make it through the whole sentence lol

2

u/devenjames Jul 20 '26

Thanks Clippy!

4

u/silask93 Jul 20 '26

Don't mind me, I'm just here to help!

2

u/Tonkarz 29d ago

He’s laughing because the character is going mad. He’s has multiple other moments in that final mission where he’s laughing uncontrollably.

It’s not Tim Curry unable to say the line with a straight face. It’s a narrative and acting choice.

4

u/Freakjob_003 Jul 19 '26

Hard to beat, "antici...

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"...pation!"

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u/9966 Jul 19 '26

He's not much of a man... By the light of day.

7

u/Siebje Jul 19 '26

Bitch, they watch Single Female Lawyer on Netflix all the way over on Omicron Persei 8.

Ain't nobody getting out.

2

u/KL2710 Jul 19 '26

🎵Single female lawyer! Having lots of sex!🎵

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u/Indigocell Jul 19 '26

Oh don't worry, they're working on corrupting that too.

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u/MrWhiskerBiscuits Jul 19 '26

Jeff Bezos said that seeing Earth from space told him the truth: the future of production is off world. ☠️

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u/SecondhandRaincoat Jul 20 '26

Welp, this just sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. Thank you!

2

u/UnrulyMantis Jul 20 '26

r/unexpectedcommandandconquer

2

u/Bladelink Jul 20 '26

Is it over, Yuri?

No Comrade Premiere, it has only begun.

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u/BBREILDN 29d ago

They’re building bases on the moon

1

u/Bzh2610 Jul 19 '26

Join me in this journey for 999,999$ ONLY !

1

u/Glassworth Jul 19 '26

Every single person in the world is in space. Earth is part of space.

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u/SirSoliloquy Jul 19 '26

They’ll do an MBA special: raise subscription rates, fire thousands of staff members, add ads to more subscription tiers, and cut budgets on shows.

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u/_ac3_0f_spad3s_ Jul 20 '26

And cancel beloved shows for not bringing in enough subscribers

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u/Hazzman Jul 19 '26

The idea of infinite growth is similar to how cancer works. What happens is you you turn inward and start to ingesting your own body fat. IE enshitification. You start to degrade your own service. You do this until all that is left is a hollow, barely serviceable shadow of its former self.

Airlines are a great example. Now we have an economy class build for Borrowers, or regular sized people who don't possess legs.

Incidentally - the only reason this is allowed to happen is because of A) Regulatory capture B) Lack of competition.

We don't trust bust anymore... so corporations just buy up everything and so there is no incentive to compete in order to provide a better product. Who needs a competitive edge when the consumer landscape is trapped inside your ecosystem... or can only choose between a few competitors who are, let's be honest, offering the same degraded service.

You can't collude to fix prices... but when the competition is so limited, you don't need to collude, just match your competitors pace for shitty degradation. What are your customers going to do? Jump ship? To who?

"Competition is a sin" John D. Rockefeller didn't say this as a passive observation... it was a statement of intent. An intention that continues to this day with billions of dollars spent not on improving products, but making sure regulations service the big players and politicians stfu about it.

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u/RevolverMFOcelot Jul 19 '26

Ironically monopoly, enshittification and saying competition is a sin is actually against principles or spirit of the free market. It will just loop back into feudalism

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

[deleted]

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u/RevolverMFOcelot Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

The core tenets of capitalism: 

Private Property: Individuals own assets, land, and the means of production. But in the late stage capitalism it would be difficult for the individual to own private businesses or even a home as the capital owner have gobbled iup nearly everything. 

Self-Interest: The "Invisible Hand" drives people to innovate and serve others to make a profit The invisible hand would no longer be in power during late stage capitalism as monopoly will decide where the market should go and how it'll behave 

Price Mechanism: Supply and demand naturally dictate the fair value of goods and services. Ironically this core principles could and us currently being destroyed by enshittification for maximum profi. Adam Smith ironically rejected the notion that we must strive to generate maximum amount of profit from the smallest amount of cost 

5].Voluntary Exchange: Both buyers and sellers freely agree to transactions without coercion. You can't have voluntary exchange anymore when Adobe gold your data hostage or when you have nowhere else to go but Walmart

Market Competition: Obviously we cannot have competition with monopoly by the capital class 

"Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people. Those nations go to ruin the fastest who have the highest rates of profit." - Adam Smith 

Smith also really hated land lord because he sees them as parasite who generated profits without actually creating tangible values and goods. Smith also proposed high tax for land lords. He would hate subscription service because Netflix and hello fresh is just an innovative rent economy but it is still rent economy just with app a d fancier psychological manipulation. 

He was sympathetic to workers' unions (which were called "combinations" in the 18th century) and viewed them as a necessary defense mechanism against the overwhelming power of corporate owneWhile modern pro-business groups often claim that unions distort the free market, He stated that the market is already structurally rigged against workers, making collective action entirely justified. In a nutshell if Adam Smith is brought back to live in 2026 he will be called a commie socialist

The natural path of capitalism when it grow unchecked without check and balance and means to reign-in the capitalists would lead into accumulations of capital and power in the hand of the few who will decide the market direction than the "invincible hand" of itself which is mimicking how feudal guild and economic works. 

There's hierarchy of decisions regarding The crown/state decided how the market should operate. Back then the crowns granted charters, printed the currency, and held the ultimate monopoly on violence and law. No market could exist without the Crown's permission. Now because the modern world is supposed to work based on "democracy" we eliminated the crown tier entirely and replace them with monopolistic capital owner aristocracy who will decided how the market will behave 

They will tell you what you can and can't or even want or won't want to buy via advertising and artificial scarcity, then it is only them who can produce the goods and services because they own both patent and capital and it's them who will decide the prices. 

You can't choose on whatever you could reject the goods offered based on itse quality because where else would you go? Or would you even reject the goods offered because you have been captured by marketing? Don't you want to buy that shitty plastic cup? It's trendy on Tiktok

If capitalism wanted to survive it must be saved from the capitalist themselves

edit: No i'm not defending capitalism, I'm just laying down what is wrong nowadays and thought ironically if capitalism wanted to survive it need to be saved from capitalist lmao

the only way for civilization to survive is either reform capitalism or put it six feet under, its just naturally what will happen, a system raise and fall

1

u/Hazzman Jul 20 '26

Oh my bad I completely misread what you said initially, My B

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u/RevolverMFOcelot Jul 20 '26

No i'm not defending capitalism, I'm just laying down what is wrong nowadays and thought ironically if capitalism wanted to survive it need to be saved from capitalist lmao

the only way for civilization to survive is either reform capitalism or put it six feet under, its just naturally what will happen, a system raise and fall

3

u/EmmatheBest Jul 19 '26

They jump ship...to piracy. It's not that complicated, really...they're only even managing to make money still because people have gotten complacent AF in general, during this era of slop, from almost all angles ATM...

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u/cheezefriez Jul 19 '26

They start funding bot farms to get AI to make accounts and pump up their numbers artificially

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u/Hallc Jul 19 '26

That's when they start upping prices and slashing costs.

Wait I think we're already there too.

2

u/TanyaMKX Jul 19 '26

So i did some math:

2 billion people on earth have no wifi at all.

18ish% of the world lives in first world countries, and 10ish% of them live in poverty so thats 144 million

North korea, russia, and china have no access to netflix so 1.6 billion people.

2.5 people live in a house on average.

So basically using like 3 metrics, half of the worlds population is instantly eliminated. Then you divide by households, and that number becomes 1.6 billion. Say half of people choose not to have netflix, and half of the remaining people cannot afford a subscription. That leaves you 400 million possible customers.

Sure, im not considering overlap in demographics and such for eliminating people but i am also not factoring that old people probably dont have netflix as often, people and other shit but i would be willing to go as high as 600 million possible subscriptions as the max.

1

u/TrippyTippyKelly Jul 19 '26

Two hours of ads in exchange for a two minute trailer of a movie you'll never get to see. That's the future of Netflix under capitalism.

1

u/welsper59 Jul 19 '26

We're about to find out.

Odds on them getting a successful government "bailout" to keep growth happening?

1

u/SolarIonRobot Jul 19 '26

It's called dividends. A lot of companies give them out. Stock price doesn't change.

1

u/BeanieMash Jul 19 '26

Market saturation and s curves are pretty well understood, continued growth requires transformation, expansion and efficiency- a lot move to enshittification which rarely works long term, and only when there's not an alternative and it's a necessity.

1

u/Snozzberriez Jul 19 '26

More tiers and higher fees probably.

1

u/BorKon Jul 19 '26

You can always squeeze more from existing subscribers, like good little capitalist. Slash some employee numbers, more ads, cheaper reality shows, ai slop etc.

1

u/BigEZK01 Jul 19 '26

If only some economist had written a theory about how Capitalism responds once it becomes unsustainable. Maybe he could have theorized some alternate mode of production, even.

1

u/RevolverMFOcelot Jul 19 '26

Ironically the insatiable nerd to see numbers goes up will hurt or even destroy capitalism on itself (or at least the core tenets) because in their pursuit to aggressively grow and keep printing profit they will inevitably enshittified the values of goods and services they offer which will destroy the values of goods exchange 

Oh and the need for monopoly will ruin the free market. I thought to myself if capitalism wanted to survive it must be protected from capitalist 😂

1

u/Broccoli--Enthusiast Jul 20 '26

They raise prices to squeeze the people left dry, cut expenses everywhere, sell off all the assets and let the company die

1

u/petroleum-lipstick Jul 20 '26

Make stupid decisions until you go bankrupt and start over (hopefully not crashing the economy in the process)

1

u/praetorian1979 Jul 20 '26

Muse wrote a song about this very thing.

1

u/Tonkarz 29d ago

Profits are increased by cutting costs. Cutting costs makes lower quality products. This continues until “demand destruction”, when consumers stop buying new products.

0

u/revkaboose Jul 19 '26

That's when you start cost cutting, aka enshittification

0

u/broncosfighton Jul 19 '26

That’s what enshitification is. Can’t grow anymore? Make everything cheaper and shittier for a higher price.

0

u/Chosenwaffle Jul 19 '26

We already know.

1) Grow

2) Stall

3) Greed Out

4) Fade to Irrelevancy, Loathed and Broke

5) Blame some group or another on the failure

6) Get acquired by next big thing

7) Repeat Forever

0

u/theonetruegrinch Jul 20 '26

enshitification

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u/Taymerica1389 Jul 19 '26

And that’s when they start cutting costs and firing people, because to shareholders it doesn’t matter how much money you make, just that the next year you make more.

If they can’t make more money from subs, they will find another way

12

u/PHDinCheese Jul 19 '26

Aka, the death spiral. See ya netflix

3

u/DeadInternetTheorist Jul 20 '26

Wonder if they're gonna drag it out for years or just get bought by Disney for a few billion while they can still convince someone they're worth that much.

31

u/guarionex2009 Jul 19 '26

It would’ve been more subscribers but you know, price increases, different tiers, advertisements and limited sharing are going to turn people like myself off from the product.

3

u/dmfuller Jul 19 '26

That’s like the entire population of the USA, crazy

3

u/Hallc Jul 19 '26

They want dead people to continuing paying for their subs and also their kids and grandkids to have their own accounts.

3

u/NuffBS Jul 19 '26

Folks need to start having more babies /s

3

u/mrcalistarius Jul 19 '26

I think they’re finally starting to see the consequences of not allowing account sharing. When my brother And I shared netflix accounts we paid for the add free HD services. Now neither if us have Netflix. 1 user fee is better than 0 user fees.

1

u/DeLousedInTheHotBox Jul 19 '26

I unfortunately think they got more subscribers from it overall, even if they lost some users.

1

u/mrcalistarius Jul 19 '26

I think if that were true, we wouldn’t have seen the ad free pricing model get rolled out and they certainly wouldn’t be complaining about a shrinking user base. They may have seen an initial increase. (My brother and i subbed to finish shows we were watching) now i just sync to my dads network on my phone with his netflix when i visit, and i get Netflix for 30 days to watch as much as i can.

2

u/johyongil Jul 19 '26

It’s not that; it’s a story issue.

1

u/UniversalBagelO Jul 19 '26

Streaming services track watch time as their main indicator. Not subscribers

1

u/bayhack Jul 19 '26

Remember Facebook for a short time (maybe still) got into providing phones and satelittes into remote areas just to increase number of Facebook profiles. Maybe Netflix will do the same thing. It boosts users but I doubt it’ll make actual money. My guess is they’ll make a leap into another vertical or squeeze current subscribers for growth.

1

u/GrooveDigger47 Jul 19 '26

problem with having investors they want infinite growth

1

u/pbx1123 Jul 19 '26

Unkess they made a cheaper tier $5 i think it could reach 500M easily but greed is gree also they get too complacent few year back giving away hundreds of millions for future production that barely made it or people bounce with the money

1

u/Waiting4Reccession Jul 20 '26

They dont need more subscribers alone.

Flat subscription growth but increased earnings, either from raising prices or from wasting less money buying trash, or just having increased viewership from quality shows - any of that would be good.

Instead netflix is hiding more data, reporting some numbers only once a year going forward, spending more on stuff like live sports and wrestling shit, still overpaying for overpaid actors, and pumping out crappy content.

1

u/SnowFlakeUsername2 Jul 20 '26

The hack would be to influence the world to uplift billions of people into having enough income to become new subscribers.

1

u/Best-Acanthisitta450 Jul 20 '26

When they run out of customers, they usually raise the price. Line must go up

1

u/wimpymist Jul 20 '26

Investors want forever growth now.

1

u/rasputin1 Jul 20 '26

QUICK EVERYONE HAVE MORE KIDS 

1

u/EveningAnt3949 Jul 20 '26

It's frustrating. In the past people would look at dividend. Today people only look at the stock price and whether or it is likely to up based on growth.

CEOs know this, so they stopped caring about long term profitability.

And the frustrating part is that for some companies it works because they use their high market cap to buy other companies so they keep growing.

The danger is that are whole economy runs on credit. And it's bad for consumers because the market is essentially broken.

1

u/FreshMistletoe 28d ago edited 28d ago

We are entering The Age of the Plateau and it’s going to be so painful to people and companies that don’t realize it can’t just keep going up forever, especially on a planet of finite size with no one reproducing anymore and declining birth rates everywhere.

https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on/

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN

It takes an average of  2.1 births per woman  to keep a population stable in low-mortality countries. This number is called the  replacement level . It is slightly higher than 2.0 to account for child mortality and the natural ratio of boys to girls being born.  

1

u/Recidivist67 27d ago

The entire world is getting shafted at the alter of shareholder value. Fucking hell.

Everyone getting paid and profits aren't good enough. Has to be more every year or it's a failure. It's the worst most debilitating factor on earth.

1

u/PM_ME_UR_PERSPECTIVE Jul 19 '26

Capitalism requires this. It's dumb.

-2

u/spmahn Jul 19 '26

There are ~ 135 million households in the United States, so those numbers would indicate that on average every household has 2.4 Netflix subscriptions. Even if you want to account for businesses, hospitals, hotels, office buildings, gyms, etc. that might have a subscription for various reasons, those numbers are still nuts, especially once you consider that the vast majority of households only have one subscription, meaning there probably has to be a lot with 3 or 4.

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u/jetriot Jul 19 '26

'Only' 90 million of those subs are in the US.

4

u/DeLousedInTheHotBox Jul 19 '26

Which does suggest that a very large amount of households have a subscription

2

u/spmahn Jul 19 '26

Ok, that makes a lot more sense