Netflix (NFLX) reported an unexpected decline in first-quarter net subscribers as the company navigated an exit from Russia and an increasingly saturated North American market. Shares slumped by more than 20% in after-hours trading following the report.

Here were the key metrics from Netflix's quarterly report, compared to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg:

• Revenue: $7.87 billion vs. $7.95 billion expected, $7.16 billion Y/Y

• Earnings per share: $3.53 vs. $2.91 expected, $3.75 Y/Y

• Net subscribers: -200,000 vs.+2.51 million expected, +3.98 million million Y/Y

Netflix's drop in new users came as a surprise to Wall Street, with analysts looking for a slowdown but still positive growth in subscriptions in the first three months of 2022. Subscribers grew by nearly 4 million in the same quarter last year. In total, Netflix exited the first quarter with 221.64 million global subscribers.

"Netflix was all about subscribers for so long," Santosh Rao, Manhattan Venture Partners head of research, told Yahoo Finance Live Tuesday afternoon following Netflix's results. “The whole story has to be evaluated from a lower base now. And the multiples are getting compelling at this point, but we need to see that the growth story is still intact and they have a strategy to tackle the challenges ahead.”

For the current quarter, Netflix said it expected an even steeper decline in new users. The streamer said it sees subscribers declining by 2 million in the fiscal second quarter, whereas consensus analysts were looking for a gain of 2.4 million.

"Our relatively high household penetration — when including the large number of households sharing accounts — combined with competition, is creating revenue growth headwinds," Netflix said in its letter to shareholders Tuesday afternoon. "The big COVID boost to streaming obscured the picture until recently."

"While we work to reaccelerate our revenue growth — through improvements to our service and more effective monetization of multi-household sharing — we’ll be holding our operating margin at around 20%," Netflix added. "Key to our success has been our ability to create amazing entertainment from all around the world, present it in highly personalized ways, and win more viewing than our competitors."