Netflix customer and investor

As a customer…
I’ve always loved Netflix ever since my brother joined 3 years ago. He’s moved out and I’ve got my own Netflix subscription now. You don’t have to be a hardcore movie lover to enjoy what Netflix has to offer. People see the term “unlimited” rentals and figure that they have to be watching movies all the time to get the most out of the service. The average cost per rental is in fact not that bad. For the $17.99 3 DVDs out at a time plan I pay $19.25 total (7% NJ tax).

Here’s how much it cost on average per rental:

# of movies / average cost
3 / $6.41
4 / $4.81
5 / $3.85
6 / $3.21
7 / $2.75
8 / $2.41
9 / $2.14
10 / $1.93

In an unlikely situation where you rent 3 per month. You’d pay $6.41 to rent each dvd, but for a whole entire month. I usually get between 6-8 dvds per month. It’s also about a matter of convenience, last month I saw seasons 1 and 2 of the Sopranos (8-disc total) and one or two other movies through netflix. I didn’t have to waste gas to drive to a video store to return or pick up any rentals. All the return envelopes are prepaid. From a customer standpoint, I love Netflix.

As an investor…
I have no clue. Seriously. I’m doing research and looking at what kind of growth is priced into the stock already and what kind of growth I think they can achieve.