Netflix’s Price Increase Could Cost The Service 500,000 Subscribers

It looks like Netflix’s price hike is coming to bite your favorite streaming service in the butt. In April, we gave you a heads up that Netflix was raising its prices by as much as $2 a month for some members. When the news was announced, many people (including us) wondered if this price increase was going to impact Netflix’s bottom line. According to at least one study, the answer to that question is yes.

Netflix’s price increase isn’t exactly news, but it’s one of those unpleasant truths that we as a society decided to push in the back of our minds and save for our future selves to handle. Several months ago, Netflix announced that it was raising the price of its standard two screen plan to $9.99 a month. However, longtime subscribers who were paying $7.99 a month or $8.99 a month were grandfathered in at those prices. That was the past, and this May paved the way for our new Netflix future, a future that involves everyone paying $9.99 a month for the standard plan. Yes this new reality hurts your wallet, but is it hurting Netflix’s? According to analysts at Nomura Securities, probably not.

In an article Variety published about the study, an estimated 27 million of Netflix’s U.S. streaming subscribers have been affected by the $9.99 a month price increase. Anthony DiClemente, an analyst for Nomura Securities estimated that the price hike could potentially lead to as many as 480,000 customers canceling their subscription. However, that estimate is a relatively small price to pay. DiClemente also estimated that the price increase will lead to the company earning $520 million in additional annual revenue. The firm came to these estimates by assuming a 2 percent churn rate for those subscribers who now have to pay an additional $2 a month and a 1 percent churn rate for subscribers who are now paying an additional $1 a month.

“We note that this has long been a tenet of our investment thesis on the domestic business, as slowing subscriber trends are more than offset by increased monetization,” DiClemente wrote on Monday in a research note.

Following these estimates, DiClemente cut his price tag for Netflix’s share price from $125 to $115 per share. So what does this all mean? Right now, not much. Netflix won’t be releasing its Q2 earnings until after July 18, so we won’t know any definite numbers from the alcoholic horse’s mouth (so to speak) until then. However, based on the way Netflix has been handling its summer programming releases and Disney deal, I’d say that the streaming service is panicking, at least a little.

In Netflix’s blog post announcing September’s Disney deal, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s Chief Content Officer, took great care highlighting all of the big titles coming to the service this June, July, and August. The blog post was almost framed in a way as if to say, “Don’t leave just yet. We have big things coming your way.” I guess we won’t know for sure how much this price increase will have helped or hurt Netflix until July. Until then, we’ll be binging Orange is the New Black.