Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc (HMNY)

[Woody Driver]

And yet MoviePass' leaders said they were not worried. Lowe, the CEO, said in a phone interview that naysayers should hold off on writing the company's obituary.

"I'd say they're going to be very surprised," Lowe said with a laugh. "Of course, I think they're wrong."

Lowe argued that the company's apparent financial setbacks are simply growing pains, the inevitable perils that subscription-based companies face on the long road to profitability. And when the frequent moviegoers give way to more casual consumers, the service might not hemorrhage as much money, he said.

"Spotify has lost billions of dollars. Amazon has lost billions of dollars," Lowe said, referring to subscription-based companies in other industries. "We're losing tens of millions of dollars, [but] people want to write us off."

Lowe may be on to something: Spotify, the music streaming platform, lost around $1.5 billion last year, but it continued to rack up subscribers and gobble up market share. For many subscription-based companies like it, financial losses are still preferable to returning to the old way of doing business, when companies relied on one-off buys and wholesale purchases.

Source:nbcnews:
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/moviepass-started-revolution-it-might-not-survive-see-it-through-n892461