Of course their investors are shareholders. But a lot finance people incorporate big companies like Netflix and Amazon into their mutual funds or hedge funds. What I'm saying, which I think is pretty clear, but I'll explain it for you anyway, is that often they don't care about gross vs net. "Oh, $60 every six months? Great!"
Yet again a common saying goes over MadMan's head. I don't even know how you're interpreting what I said. To reiterate for your lizard brain, when I say they think of subscription money as "free money", they don't take the cost to implement that subscription and deliver the promised goods and services into account. Let's say I run MadMan's Video Game Disposal Service. For $50 a year, I have a tryhard internet troll come to your house once a month and tell you that you're a tool for owning video games, convincing you to get rid of a few games. The employee brings them back to my Game Destruction Facility where I have SammyBean drop her brownies all over the discs and carts, rendering them virtually unrecognizable. My stupid investors (i.e., the majority) would think, "Wow! That's $50 going to the business for every subscription they sell!" My smart investors would say, "OK, sure, you get $50 per subscriber per year, but you have to pay your troll minimum wage to go out to the subscriber's house once a month. That's about $150 a year right there per subscriber. Then you have to pay for the Game Destruction Facility. The rent is going to be $2,000 a month. And you have to pay SammyBean. Even as an independent contractor, she's going to cut into your budget." Therefore, while I'm charging $50 per subscriber, I'm actually losing much more than $50 per subscriber. Get it?