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 The company blamed a $1 price hike to $8.99 a month for discouraging
new sign-ups. It lured 3.02 million new streaming customers
globally, versus the 3.69 million it projected in July.
Netflix attracted about 980,000 new customers in the United States,
its largest market, down from 1.29 million in the same period a year
earlier.
The news came after Time Warner Inc's HBO said on Wednesday it will
offer new competition next year with a streaming service that does
not require a pay TV subscription.
"Year-on-year net additions in the U.S. were down," Netflix said in
a quarterly letter to shareholders. "As best we can tell, the
primary cause is the slightly higher prices we now have compared to
a year ago."
Shares of Netflix fell 25 percent to $333.53 in after-hours trading,
from their $448.59 close on Nasdaq.
Netflix, waving off fears that a standalone HBO would draw users
away, argued that many will subscribe to both services because they
offer different shows.
"It is likely we both prosper as consumers move to Internet TV," the
company's letter said.
Chief Executive Reed Hastings said in an interview that he expected
other premium channels such as Showtime and Starz to sell
programming directly to consumers. CBS-owned Showtime said it was
weighing such a move. Starz has announced plans to offer that type
of service overseas.
Netflix has invested in original series such as "House of Cards" and
"Orange is the New Black" to compete with HBO, Amazon.com Inc and
on-demand offerings from pay TV providers.
Netflix also is pushing into original movies, financing four Adam
Sandler films and a sequel to martial-arts drama "Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon."
The HBO news, overall stock market weakness, and the subscriber
forecast miss likely sparked the share selloff, Hudson Square
Research analyst Daniel Ernst. But he said Netflix has proven it can
bounce back from disappointing quarters.
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"They have got a good track record in growing past this turbulence,"
said Ernst, who rates Netflix a "buy."
The company forecast it will add 4 million streaming subscribers in
the fourth quarter.
Netflix expanded into six European countries in September.
Its international subscribers grew 72 percent to 15.84 million from
a year earlier.
Net income rose to $59.3 million, or 96 cents per share, from $31.8
million, or 52 cents per share, in the year-ago period.
Revenue rose about 28 percent to $1.41 billion.
Analysts had expected profit of 93 cents per share on revenue of
$1.41 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles and Soham Chatterjee in
Bangalore; Editing by Kirti Pandey, Simon Jennings, Richard Chang
and Ken Wills)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
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