Netflix Loses 800,000 US Subscribers, Earnings To Dip

Netflix reported its Q3 earnings results today and although the numbers were positive, they won't remain so in the upcoming months. CEO Reed Hastings has admitted that the company's recent stumbles, including price hikes and the now canceled plans for Qwikster, were ill received, tarnishing the company's "hard-earned reputation."

Actual revenue reached $822 million, up 49 percent year-over-year, while profit hit $62 million, up 63 percent from the same period last year. However, the company projects to be hit with a loss of between $60 to $70 million in Q1 of 2012 due to its expansion into the UK and Ireland.

Partly due to the price hike, Netflix lost 800,000 subscribers last quarter in the US, leaving it with 23.8 million subscribers, of which 21.5 million subscribed to streaming and 13.4 million subscribed to DVD rentals. The company noted that only seven percent of new Netflix streaming customers chose the DVD option.

Netflix is set to lose Starz content, but Hastings downplays this, saying that Starz only accounted for six percent of actual viewing time on Netflix. Hastings also claimed that neither Amazon Prime nor Hulu Plus were threats as one has less content and the other only shows recent TV content.

[via TechCrunch]