Netflix Shares Tumble After Slower Than Expected Subscriber Growth

High-flying streaming service Netflix missed its own forecasts for subscriber growth in the second quarter, falling short by 1 million net additions.

Netflix added 5.2 million subscribers in the quarter, well shy of the the 6.2 million net new additions reflected in its own forecasts, which was the general neighborhood of most Wall Street analyst predictions. The company’s stock dropped more than 13% in after-hours trading following a 1% gain during the trading day to a close of $400.48.

The company said the numbers don’t reflect an underlying business issue, but rather that it had gotten more aggressive in its subscriber forecasts because it dramatically understated the numbers in the previous quarters. In three of the past 10 periods, the company has fallen short of its own targets.

Overall, the streaming giant added 130 million subscribers, which also missed Wall Street consensus projections of 131 million.

“As a reminder, the quarterly guidance we provide is our actual internal forecast at the time we report and we strive for accuracy, meaning in some quarters we will be high and other quarters low relative to our guidance,” said CEO Reed Hastings in his quarterly letter to shareholders. “This Q2, we over-forecasted global net additions which amounted to 5.2M vs. a forecast of 6.2M and flat compared to Q2 a year ago, as acquisition growth was slightly lower than we projected. Paid net adds totaled 5.5M in Q2, compared with 4.7M last year and forecast of 6.1M.”

The company posted per-share earnings of 85 cents on revenue of $3.91 billion for the quarter. That’s ahead of consensus estimates of 79 cents a share on revenue of $3.94 billion.

Barton Crockett of B. Riley FBR injected a note of caution before Netflix reported its results, observing that the global growth in searches for new shows has flattened. Even searches for Netflix has slowed somewhat.

“Netflix, for all of its admirable success, has had stock performance that challenges the investing bromide that trees can’t grow to the sun,” Crockett wrote. “The Google search slowdown adds a little substance for those of us who are inclined to have some caution, relative to recently raised expectations.”

Execs will host their quarterly video conference call with investors at the top of the hour.