Netflix Inc. predicted Monday that subscription growth would slide sharply in the current quarter, a factor in a fast decline for the company’s stock in late trading.

However, history shows Netflix NFLX, -0.05% predictably undershoots on its subscription-growth forecasts. In the same quarter a year ago, the company made the same forecast for new subscribers that it did Monday — 2.5 million — and ended up topping that figure by nearly 24%, at 3.28 million.

In fact, Netflix has topped its subscriber growth forecast in each of the past six quarters, only once in that period coming within even 5% of its projection, and in nine of the past 10 quarters. Netflix said Monday that it gained 6.74 million new subscribers in the first quarter, 9.5% higher than its 6.1 million projection.

Corporate projections are always based on assumptions and can’t be fully trusted, but that could be even more true in Netflix’s case, as there are very few comparisons to the type of service and growth the video-on-demand company has experienced. Rapid international expansion and other factors can swing the number wildly from quarter to quarter.

JackDaw Research Chief Analyst Jan Dawson noted that Netflix has also been subject to unpredictable subscription cycles due to new content being added in different quarters, as well as price increases that have been slowly phased in for multiple years. The effects seem to be the same for Netflix as for analysts who attempt to hazard their own forecasts.

“At root, there’s simply no precedent for growth on this sort of global basis for a mass market paid service — even Netflix is operating in the dark here,” Dawson said Monday.

While Netflix may not be able to accurately predict how many new subscribers it will attract, it seems to be good at predicting fewer subscribers than actually arrive. That could be good news for investors fearful that the company’s forecast for the current quarter signals impending doom.