Shares of Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) fell 14% after hours on top of a drop of a drop of 4% during regular trading hours. The stock reached $88 compared to a 52-week high of $304.79 as the video rental company reported another set of disappointing numbers.

Netflix reported

Netflix added nearly 3 million streaming members in Q1, bringing our total to over 26 million global streaming members, and strengthening our position as the world’s leading Internet TV network. We anticipate returning to global profitability in Q2, and plan to launch our next international market in Q4. We are constantly improving our service with better personalization, better user-interfaces, better streaming, and more content. As a result, per-member viewing hours set new records in Q1 and are on track to do so again in Q2, on a year-over-year basis. We launched our service in the UK and Ireland in January and are very pleased that, after the first 90 days, we had substantially more members than we had after the first 90 days of Canada or Latin America.

Net revenue rose from $719 million to $870 million. The company had a net loss of $5 million compared to a profit of $60 million in the same period a year ago. Netflix may still be growing, but the rate has slowed. The cost of adding and retaining clients and paying licensing fees of new content has risen substantially. Wall St. worries that Netflix is in a bidding war with telecom and cable providers and other firms with VOD package which now include Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN)

The earnings were better than the company expected,  but investors no longer see Netflix as one of the great business success of the last few years.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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