By Yasin Ebrahim

After the unexpected drop in subscribers, Netflix reported Tuesday that it had reported mixed revenue results in its first quarter.     

Netflix reported earnings per share at $3.53 on revenues of $7.87billion. Investing.com polled analyst to predict EPS of $2.95 on $7.9 billion revenue.

After-hours trading on Netflix lost over 20% following the news.

For the first quarter of 2022, the company lost 200,000 subscribers, confounding its own expectations for 2.5 million net subscriber adds. Analysts were expecting about 2.8million net adds. Netflix reported its last subscriber loss in 2011

The loss in subscribers comes as the streaming giant implemented price hikes in developed markets including the U.S. and Canada, while the loss of Russian subscribers as – the company suspended its services in the country – also weighed.

Netflix stated that the suspension of service in Russia, and winding down of Russian paid members resulted in an impact of -0.7m on paid net Adds. However, this effect was negated by paid net additions of +0.5m. The main obstacle to membership growth lies in continued soft acquisitions across all regions. 

As Netflix predicts that second quarter net subscribers will drop to 2.0 million, Netflix isn’t expecting any signs of an increase in subscription growth. This compares with the 1.5 million net additions for the same period last year.