Netflix Shares Slammed on Subscriber Outlook

Shares of Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) were getting hammered Thursday morning after the movie-rental company slashed its domestic subscriber outlook by one million users.

The company recently ended its offering of a $9.99-a-month plan for DVD rental and movie streaming, instead requiring subscribers to pay $7.99 a month for each. At the time, the reaction to that move was overwhelmingly negative.

"We know our decision to split our services has upset many of our subscribers, which we don't take lightly, but we believe this split will help us make our services better for subscribers and shareholders for years to come," the company said Thursday.

While Netflix did not tweak its financial guidance, it said it now expects to have 24 million domestic subscribers at the end of the current quarter, down from its guidance of 25 million on July 25th.

Back then, Netflix said it anticipated it would have 3 million subscribers for its DVD-only service, 10 million for its streaming-only service, and 12 million for both. Todays guidance brought the DVD-only number down to 2.2 million and streaming-only to 9.8 million.

The estimate for subscribers paying for both services remained at 12 million.