₦airaland Forum

Netflix shares lost a quarter of their value Tuesday after the company revealed its ranks of subscribers shrank in the first quarter of this year.

It was the first time in a decade that the leading streaming television service had lost subscribers. The company blamed the quarter-over-quarter erosion on the suspension of its service in Russia due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Netflix ended the first quarter of this year with 221.6 million subscribers, slightly less than the final quarter of last year.

The Silicon Valley tech firm reported a net income of $1.6 billion in the recently ended quarter, compared to $1.7 billion in the same period a year earlier. Netflix shares were down some 25 percent to $262 in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings figures.

“We’re not growing revenue as fast as we’d like,” Netflix said in an earnings letter.

“Covid clouded the picture by significantly increasing our growth in 2020, leading us to believe that most of our slowing growth in 2021 was due to the Covid pull forward.”

Netflix believes that factors hampering its growth include the time it is taking for homes to get access to affordable broadband internet service and smart televisions, along with subscribers sharing their accounts with people not living in their homes.
The streaming giant estimated that while it has nearly 222 million households paying for its service, accounts are shared with more than 100 million other households not paying the television streaming service.

“Account sharing as a percentage of our paying membership hasn’t changed much over the years, but, coupled with the first factor, means it’s harder to grow membership in many markets,” Netflix said.

Netflix last year began testing ways to make money from people sharing accounts, such as by adding a feature that lets subscribers pay slightly more to add other households.

Another factor for Netflix is intense competition from titans such as Apple and Disney.

“Our plan is to reaccelerate our viewing and revenue growth by continuing to improve all aspects of Netflix — in particular the quality of our programming and recommendations,” Netflix said, adding that it is “doubling down” on content creation.

The Lagos State Police Command says it has stretched out solicitations to the administration of Chrisland Schools, guardians and the understudies purportedly engaged with sexual demonstrations during a school excursion to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The state Police Public Relations Officer, SP Benjamin Hundeyin, expressed this during a phone interview with our reporter on Tuesday.

He said, "Every one of the gatherings have been welcome to the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, Yaba. The gatherings incorporate the school specialists, guardians and their kids.

"No one has revealed at this point, however we are in contact with them and they have all given us a sensible date and time that they will come. Whatever occurs after their greeting will decide the following line of activity."

A source, nonetheless, uncovered to our reporter that every one of the gatherings would report at the SCIID on Wednesday.

PUNCH Metro had revealed that the understudies, including a 10-year-old young lady, were among the 76 students that addressed the school during the World School Games in Dubai which held between March 8 and 14, 2022.

During the occasion, the 10-year-old young lady was allegedly associated with sexual demonstrations which were recorded by another student.
The video clip went viral on Twitter on Monday.

The mother of the girl was heard in another recorded clip accusing the school of cover-up and taking her daughter for a pregnancy test without parental consent.

The state government then shut down all Chrisland Schools in the state, as the police commenced investigation into the matter.

Chrisland Schools, in a statement by a member of its advisory board, Akin Fadeyi, late Monday, denied the rape allegation, adding that the school did not take the child for any pregnancy test.
Reacting to the incident, a senior lawyer, Jiti Ogunye, faulted the Lagos State Government for taking a knee-jack approach to such issues.

He said, “Too often, the government reacts with a knee-jack approach. Knee-jack in the sense that it is when something happens that it will say it is closing down the school.

“It closed down the school, so what happens to the right to education of other pupils in the school? What happened to their right to learn in school? What happened to the money parents paid?