Who knew that growing too fast could harm your company?

Netflix, the popular mail-order movie and television episode rental company, pulled all Sony-produced movies from its streaming offerings Friday after the company's growth forced Netflix to renegotiate its contract with Sony.

Now with nearly 24 million subscribers, Netflix continues to grow, mostly because of its low-cost streaming subscription service that includes thousands of television shows and movies. Many of those offerings Netflix has paid top dollar for.

It's not clear how much Netflix was paying Sony to include its offerings like the Spider-Man movies on its service, but with so many more people trying to tap into the streaming service, it likely will be more. Much more.

Netflix, a company that has its roots in a video rental customer upset about getting late fees on "Apollo 13" more than a decade ago, has grown from a niche company that would deliver DVDs to rent by mail, to one of the leading media platforms for everything from movies to television shows.

In fact, the growth of Netflix has had the rest of the entertainment industry concerned about how it could affect what has become traditional offerings, like cable (see story). A recent survey of premium cable subscribers showed a third were willing to scale back how much they're paying for cable, in part because of the offerings available on Netflix.

The stoppage between Netflix and Sony Corp. is expected to be just a temporary one. Both sides obviously have a lot to gain from their working relationship together, and Netflix doesn't seem too worried about paying out money.

In fact, Netflix chief executive officer Reed Hastings told reporters that he wouldn't be surprised if the $30 million annual deal the company has with the Starz cable channel grew into a $200 million deal with the contract is renegotiated next year.

And Hastings didn't even flinch. But why should he? Company shares currently trade at more than $245 each (as of June 20), giving Netflix is a market capitalization rate of nearly $13 billion. It reported a profit of more than $60 million in the first quarter of 2011 on revenue of more than $718 million. That was well ahead of its pace in 2010, when its first quarter saw a $32 million profit on revenue of just $494 million.

Although Sony products have been pulled from the streaming service, they still remain available on the physical DVD mail service that Netflix still offers.