Netflix could lose several million subscribers this quarter due to the blowback against the French drama “Cuties,” Wells Fargo analyst Steve Cahall said in a report on Tuesday.
Cahall slashed his third quarter projection by 50% to 2.5 million new subscribers, while pointing to the “short-lived but potentially stark churn uptick in September due to controversy around ‘Cuties.’” The bulk of those subscriber cancellations will come from the U.S. and Canada, Cahall said, because that’s where “Cuties” received the most criticism.
“We think this could weigh more heavily on third-quarter net adds than investors realize,” Cahall said, “so we reduce our estimate for global streaming net adds.”