New York (AFP)

The streaming giant Netflix attracted 10.1 million new subscribers in the second quarter, but its share fell by more than 10% on Thursday on Wall Street when its profit is worse than expected and that growth should slow.

Since the beginning of the year, the platform has attracted a total of 26 million new paying subscribers, enticed by the thousands of hours of programs offered by the site at the time when the Covid-19 pandemic forced many of them to stay home.

This is almost as much as the 28 million new subscribers registered in the whole of 2019, notes Netflix which now has 192.95 million subscribers.

"However, as expected, growth is slowing as consumers recover from the initial Covid shock and restrictive measures," said the group, which anticipates only 2.5 million new paying subscribers in the third quarter. .

Net profit more than doubled in the second quarter to $ 720 million. But adjusted per share, the benchmark for investors, it stands at 1.59 dollars where analysts expected 1.81 dollars. The group notably had to face currency effects.

Its turnover increased by 25% to reach 6.15 billion dollars, slightly above expectations (6.08 billion).

The group also points out that it is "slowly" resuming the production of content worldwide.

Projects are already well underway in Asia and in a few European countries and Netflix has also restarted the production of two films in California and two animated films in Oregon.

But "the current trends on new infections create more uncertainty" on the projects in the United States, notes the group.

As production times are fairly long, the original show and movie launches slated for 2020 have largely remained intact, says Netflix. For 2021, the group anticipates that the number of outings will be the same but that they will be more concentrated in the second half.

The group is not particularly worried about this delay.

"The pandemic and production breaks have a similar impact on our competitors and our suppliers. With our large library of thousands of strong titles and recommendations, we think our members will remain satisfied," he said.

Netflix also announced on the release of its results that Ted Sarandos, currently in charge of content, has been appointed co-managing director alongside co-founder Reed Hastings.

© 2020 AFP