Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/15/share-price-for-moviepass-drop.html
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Even at 5¢ a share, that’s still a hell of a lot of Venezuelan Bolivars.
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A tech company with absolutely no viable business model assures us that we’ve entered a new economy, this time centered around user data, so the old rules don’t apply, then finds out that, no, the old rules do apply, and tanks.
First off: 
And second, I need to start keeping track of all the unrealistic start-ups I’m personally certain will founder, just out of curiosity.
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Reverse split. I really hate when my zippers pull that shit.
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Jeff Bezos got mega-rich on a business model of losing money, so why shouldn’t these guys too?
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Huge market crash coming.
The crash of 2000 was at a Buffet indicator* of 110%. 2007 was 145%. We are at 149%.
*Not an infallible metric.
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yeah, buffet’s indicator is flawed at best. But YMMV for anyone when it comes to bullish/bearish investments. Sometimes it’s no different than playing the lottery.
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Sounds like a dead parrot.
Never heard of MoviePass before.
So this didn’t make much sense to me the other day. Now it does…
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The class action lawsuit is going to finish off the parent company pretty quick.
It reminds me of a promo from about 19 years ago, when a website was selling any CD for $4.95. They were overwhelmed very quickly, and sent out an email to the effect of “We were not expecting this…” I think I eventually received about 1/4 of what I’d ordered, but it took a while.
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Sounds like I should sign up so I can extract my pound of flesh before they are gone.
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Is this one of them stocks you buy and then sell for “tax loss harvesting”?
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I never understood how they expected to be successful. (Perhaps they didn’t, and just wanted to get bought out?) The economics just don’t work. In order for their model to work, people need to pay for the subscription and then not use it for the full value. That in of itself isn’t such a bad idea; other subscription services work just this way. Gym memberships come to mind. The problem is that the only people who would use such a service are movie buffs. Those people will absolutely watch as many movies as they can, resulting in a loss for venues and a loss for MoviePass.
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The headline is wrong…the share price didn’t fall $132. The company lost a lot of money, an amount that equals $132 for each share. In other words, the company is bleeding cash, and since investors notice these things, people are selling the stock and now the most people will pay for a share of the company is 5 cents. According to the article the stock price was once $39, so over time (almost a year) it has declined over 99%.
A lot of people, probably the majority it seems, conflate share price with the actual cash a company makes or loses. The two are separate issues, though of course they become related because a company making or losing money (eventually) influences the stock price.
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Wow, MoviePass’s parent company went through two declines of 99%. The first was from $33 to 8 cents, which became $20 on the reverse split, then that fell to 5 cents.
Which makes their stock chart almost impossible to interpret, as you look back and see that the shares were once worth over $8,000 (hindsight-adjusted for the reverse split).
So in real terms, over less than a year, the stock price fell from $8,000 to 5 cents. Or without the reverse split, from about $33 to about 1/5000 of a dollar.
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Not to mention that for a lot of folks, including me, you literally cannot cancel your membership. For some that means the app crashes when you hit “cancel.” For me the button does nothing. I will give it a few more days but it looks like I will have to have my bank block the transfers.
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I think their business model is right on track: after gaining 3 million subscribers, enforce the new policy of 2 movie choices a day (and chances are they both suck) and occasionally restrict peak showtimes.
Raise the price of the monthly subscription and simultaneously watch people stop using the service while still remaining subscribed.
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I cancelled today after they emailed me to tell me that I’d only be able to pick from 6 different movies on a given day, with limited theaters and times available. When I looked at the app it was actually showing me 0 movies I could watch. This is after last week when they emailed me to tell me I was limited to 3 movies a week (with additional movies available at a discount)
I never really profited from using it anyway. I watched about 3 movies/month which probably saved me $20/mo. That’s not nothing but it’s not a huge deal. I would have loved to have Moviepass when I was unemployed… but I’m too busy to really cash in on it.
I think osviot has it - they’re going to slowly boil the water and see if the frogs notice.
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