Netflix shares fall more than 35% after streamer loses over 200,000 subscribers

Shares of Netflix lost more than 35% of their value in New York on Wednesday, after the streaming giant announced it had lost more than 200,000 subscribers in the first three months of the year and said it and expects to lose 2 million more over the next quarter.

A number of rival services, including Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount, often with deeper content libraries to draw on, have also entered the market. Netflix stock, which was already down 40% for the year, has now dropped from $700 in November to $244 when the market opened, a fall approaching two-thirds.

In terms of capitalization, Netflix is now worth $1009bn, a figure that will make it more difficult for its Los Gatos, California-based management to raise money to fund the investment for content production upon which subscriber growth has been dependent.

The confluence of negative forces, from the lifting of the pandemic, the loss of 700,000 subscribers in Russia, high consumer inflation in many leading markets forcing households to rethink their budgets, have hit the service.

Shares of Netflix rose 86% from the end of 2019 through 2021, while the S&P 500 climbed 48%.