Coronavirus, Not Competition, Blamed for Netflix Q1 Sub Miss

Netflix ruled out streaming competition for Q1's subscriber forecast miss (see 2104200076), said co-CEO Reed Hastings. “We really looked through all the data, looking at different regions where new competitors are launched, are not launched, and we just can't see any difference in our relative growth.” The business is “intensely competitive, but it always has been,” he told investors Tuesday. “We've been competing with Amazon Prime for 13 years, with Hulu for 14 years. It's always been very competitive with linear TV, too. So there's no real change that we can detect in the competitive environment.” It “really boils down” to COVID-19, said Chief Financial Officer Spencer Neumann. The pandemic continues to have a big global impact “and for us, at a minimum, creates just some short-term kind of choppiness in some of the business trends that we see,” he said. The stock closed down 7.4% Wednesday at $508.90.