After losing more than 12% on Monday, Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) shares are down an additional 6% today, dropping to a new two-year low. Yesterday's plunge came as the company announced plans to reduce two of its monthly subscription plans by a dollar, dropping the most-popular $17.99 plan to $16.99 per month and reducing the single-disc $9.99 plan to $8.99. Good news for Netflix users, but potentially bad news for shareholders, as the move - at least initially - means a smaller bottom line. Last night after the closing bell, the company reported second-quarter income of $26.6 million, or 37 cents per share, a 50% increase from the previous year. Revenue improved by 27% to $303.7 million. Excluding items, NFLX would have banked 31 cents per share, easily topping analysts' expectations of 23 cents. But for the first time in the company's eight-year history, the total number of subscribers dropped. At the second quarter's conclusion, Netflix had 6.74 million subscribers, a net loss of 55,000 in the three-month reporting period. The equity was quickly trading lower in after-hours activity.
Then today, Netflix subscribers (such as myself) awoke to find our beloved site offline. The company's home page -- an intuitive work of website engineering that allows users to rate recent returns, rearrange queues, and share reviews with fellow subscribers -- crashed at some point Monday evening and is, as of 2:15 p.m. Eastern time, still unavailable.
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