Netflix stock drops after streaming giant predicts subscriber slowdown.
Netflix added 8.3 million subscribers in the fourth quarter, raising its worldwide subscriber base to 222 million, but the company said on Thursday that it expected growth to slow in the opening months of 2022.
That news, in the company’s earnings release, prompted the stock to drop nearly 20 percent in after-hours trading. For the first quarter of this year, Netflix forecast an additional 2.5 million subscribers, down from the four million it added during the same quarter of 2021. That would be one of the streaming giant’s slowest opening quarters in years.
The number of subscribers added in the fourth quarter was slightly off the 8.5 million that Netflix had forecast, but the 1.2 million added from the United States and Canada region reflected its strongest quarter there since the beginning of the pandemic. Most of the growth came outside the United States, as has been the case for the last few quarters.
Netflix’s co-chief executive Reed Hastings admitted during an investor conference call on Thursday that he was frustrated by the slower growth in subscriptions. “We are staying calm and trying to figure it out,” he said.
