Netflix loses 200,000 subscribers in less than 100 days. Here’s why

Netflix shares lost a quarter of their value on Tuesday after the company revealed its ranks of subscribers shrank in the first quarter of this year.

It was the first time in a decade that Netflix  had lost subscribers. The company blamed the quarter-over-quarter erosion to suspension of its service in Russia due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Netflix ended the first quarter of this year with 221.6 million subscribers, slightly less than the final quarter of last year.

The Silicon Valley tech firm reported a net income of $1.6 billion in the recently ended quarter, compared to $1.7 billion in the same period a year earlier. Netflix shares were down some 25 percent to $262 in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings figures.

“We’re not growing revenue as fast as we’d like,” Netflix said in an earnings letter.

“Covid clouded the picture by significantly increasing our growth in 2020, leading us to believe that most of our slowing growth in 2021 was due to the Covid pull forward.”

Netflix thinks that factors hampering its growth include the time it is taking for homes to get access to affordable broadband internet service and smart televisions, along with subscribers sharing their accounts with people not living in their homes.