These investors criticize the Californian group for having lied and hidden from information while the number of subscribers has dropped for the first time in ten years.
Le Monde With AFP
Netflix is at the heart of a storm. After the announcement of declining subscriptions, the streaming platform wins, now, the shareholder complaint which considers it to have been deceived. According to the latter, in the press release they published on Tuesday January 4, the Californian group, made “false and/or misleading” declarations and hid certain information.
Investors, whose complaint was filed on May 3 before the Federal Court of San Francisco in California, criticize Netflix in particular for not having said that “the growth of subscribers’ acquisitions slowed down, among others , sharing accounts between several customers and increased competition from other streaming services “.
Netflix announced, in fact, on April 19 that it had lost 200,000 subscribers worldwide in the first quarter compared to the end of 2021, a first for more than ten years. The price of the action then sold “more than 35 %, to finish at 226.19 dollars on April 20”, note the lawyers responsible for group action.
increased and varied competition
The streaming giant, which expects to lose even more subscribers in the spring, has planned to tighten the screw on the side of the sharing of identifiers and passwords, which allow many people not to pay Access to the platform. He had already announced in March that he was conducting tests in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru to make his customers pay additional accounts to their profile.
But in his forecasts for the first trimester, Netflix had planned to win 2.5 million additional subscribers – and analysts discounted even more – hence the shock caused by this loss.
It was partly caused by the suspension of the service in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, which led to a net loss of 700,000 subscriptions. “Without this impact, we would have had 500,000 additional subscriptions” compared to the last quarter, said Netflix, April 19.
In all, the platform has 221.64 million subscriptions. It regularly evokes, during quarterly results, competition from other services, but also that of indirect competitors, applications like Tiktok to video games.