May 5, 2024

Bits Blog: Netflix Market Value Shrivels

Netflix has seen its market value drop drastically due to a series of recent missteps.Netflix has seen its market value drop drastically due to a series of recent missteps.

In July, Netflix’s market value was over $16 billion. On Tuesday, after a bruising response to the financial results the company released late Monday, the Internet movie company lost more than $2 billion in value, bringing its total market capitalization to just over $4 billion.

Ouch.

The fallout among Netflix investors from a string of recent missteps by the company seems to be worse even than the damage it has done to its standing with customers. After an uproar over a 60 percent price increase on one of its most popular rental plans and a plan — later aborted — to separate its DVD rental business into a separate service, Netflix lost about 800,000 domestic subscribers between the end of June and the end of September. That was bad, but it was still just 3 percent of its audience.

The stock market reaction, on the other hand, suggests that investors think the situation at Netflix could get worse before its gets better.

In an interview on Monday evening after the company’s earnings came out, Netflix’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, provided a rough estimate of how long he thought it would take for the wounds to the company’s reputation to heal, at least among customers. Citing customer satisfaction surveys that once showed Netflix’s reputation on a par or better than that of Amazon and Apple, Mr. Hastings said, “It will take more than one year” for Netflix to claw its way back to that level.

He says the company can do that by adding more appealing content to its streaming Internet service, some of which it has already licensed, like DreamWorks movies, which are scheduled to appear on Netflix beginning in 2013.

Mr. Hastings said the rough last few months that the company has endured will eventually be a “footnote in business school history” for Netflix.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=47700a01eebf99f3030438e58ed43249