Number Crunch
Netflix Can’t Chill As It Loses Subscribers in U.S. & Canada
The king of streaming is struggling for growth
400,000: That’s the number of subscribers Netflix lost in the US and Canada in Q2 of 2021, the first time it has lost subscribers in those markets since early 2019.
Netflix is a business that is driven by one thing only: subscriber growth. To maintain its position as the market leader, keep investors happy, and be afforded the luxury of spending eye-popping amounts of money (the company projects an outlay of $17 billion in 2021), that number needs to trend upwards continually — and preferably as fast as possible.
In a Q2 earnings report published July 20, the company announced it had exceeded its growth forecast, adding 1.5 million new subscribers, marginally better than its estimate of 1 million. It ended Q2 with 209 million paying subscribers, a figure that is also ahead of its guidance forecasting. All should be well. But the loss of 400,000 subscribers in the US and Canada regions — the first loss of any kind in the area since early 2019 — shows that the streaming giant is struggling to maintain its meteoric growth amidst challenging conditions and growing competition. Or, as Netflix puts it, “COVID has created some lumpiness in our membership growth… which is…
