Why Netflix's Stock Dropped 41% in Two Months (cnn.com) 156
"Netflix's stock has tumbled 41% from the all-time high it hit just two months ago," reports CNN Business.
"It's gaining subscribers at a painfully slow pace. Competition is heating up. The company's answer to all that: It just raised prices on North American customers." Netflix ended 2021 with 221.8 million subscribers. That's significantly more than others in the streaming marketplace, including Disney, one of its closest competitors. Disney had 118.1 million subscribers as of October, and it grew subscriptions 60% between October 2020 and October 2021. During that same period, Netflix grew just 9%. Disney hasn't yet reported its financial results for the last three months of 2021. But Netflix's growth slowed even further in the fourth quarter to just 8%. (And Disney's growth last quarter spooked Wall Street too....)
The problem with relying exclusively on subscriptions for revenue is: after a while, you run out of people who haven't subscribed. That's bad news for Wall Street investors who are mostly concerned with companies' abilities to grow. Zak Shaikh, vice president of programming at research-based media firm Magid, believes that Netflix's fall is more of "a Wall Street thing" rather than "something that reflects the business is in trouble.... They still added subs, and they still have the same high usage and viewing metrics," he added. However, even Shaikh pointed out that in the long term, "Netflix will have to deal with the fact that you can't keep adding subscribers."
One way the company has tried to offset its slowing growth is by investing in other verticals, such as gaming. Another way is to raise prices, but that could prove difficult as fierce competition ramps up. Although price increases will probably help to offset its sluggish sign ups, they could also lead to more stagnation for Netflix. For some consumers, price increases — even small ones — are a lot to ask considering that so many competitors are at Netflix's gates.
Michael Nathanson, a media analyst at MoffettNathanson, specifically predicted to CNN Business that 2022 will be a year "of concern about growth and competition for Netflix."
"It's gaining subscribers at a painfully slow pace. Competition is heating up. The company's answer to all that: It just raised prices on North American customers." Netflix ended 2021 with 221.8 million subscribers. That's significantly more than others in the streaming marketplace, including Disney, one of its closest competitors. Disney had 118.1 million subscribers as of October, and it grew subscriptions 60% between October 2020 and October 2021. During that same period, Netflix grew just 9%. Disney hasn't yet reported its financial results for the last three months of 2021. But Netflix's growth slowed even further in the fourth quarter to just 8%. (And Disney's growth last quarter spooked Wall Street too....)
The problem with relying exclusively on subscriptions for revenue is: after a while, you run out of people who haven't subscribed. That's bad news for Wall Street investors who are mostly concerned with companies' abilities to grow. Zak Shaikh, vice president of programming at research-based media firm Magid, believes that Netflix's fall is more of "a Wall Street thing" rather than "something that reflects the business is in trouble.... They still added subs, and they still have the same high usage and viewing metrics," he added. However, even Shaikh pointed out that in the long term, "Netflix will have to deal with the fact that you can't keep adding subscribers."
One way the company has tried to offset its slowing growth is by investing in other verticals, such as gaming. Another way is to raise prices, but that could prove difficult as fierce competition ramps up. Although price increases will probably help to offset its sluggish sign ups, they could also lead to more stagnation for Netflix. For some consumers, price increases — even small ones — are a lot to ask considering that so many competitors are at Netflix's gates.
Michael Nathanson, a media analyst at MoffettNathanson, specifically predicted to CNN Business that 2022 will be a year "of concern about growth and competition for Netflix."
Capitalism is so dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
$30 billion a year or something in subscription revenue, and investors are concerned that it isn't GROWING. Lord. In what world is a company like that not just a huge win? This system is so unsustainable.
Re:Capitalism is so dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing that may well decrease its profitability as less of a growth company is the ability to pay employees in shares. They'll have to pay more cash. But will that be enough to bring it down? I think not.
The Content is unsustainable (Score:3, Interesting)
This leaves Netflix trying to make their own shows, but that's crazy expensive and they've been doing it for years without a hit. They've had some popular shows, but no Sopranos or Game of Thrones. Nothing that really takes off and gives them a measure of security.
The result is that they're kind of on borrow
Re:The Content is unsustainable (Score:4, Insightful)
And where is HBO now that GoT is over? Spending hundreds of millions more to make new content to keep subscribers. They're all playing the game, they're all creating fantastic content, and there's a big enough pie to go around.
It's just that Netflix days as a "growth" tech company may be coming to a close.
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Breaking Bad isn't a netflix show. Did you mean Stranger Things, or maybe The Crown?
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Lost In Space
I gave up on Lost in Space after it turned into a soap opera at the end of the second season. It would have been great to see them go around looking at interesting different planets. They could have kept interesting content with that for a while.
Breaking bad is AMC (Score:2)
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I wish they still had Altered Carbon, instead of killing it off.
The show even allowed them to change even the main actors every season (if they had some issues), cos of the story.
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Re: The Content is unsustainable (Score:2)
Umm. Are you seriously suggesting that the problem is that there is not enough filmmakers?
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This leaves Netflix trying to make their own shows, but that's crazy expensive and they've been doing it for years without a hit.
Yeah. No hit at all. Certainly none big enough that ISPs tried taking them to court over the bandwidth use https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org] nosireee.
It's not like some of their shows are basically universally lauded as well https://www.rottentomatoes.com... [rottentomatoes.com]
Seriously don't drink and Slashdot.
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Netflix has lots of hits. What they don't have is a massive library of stuff they can keep selling to people because of nostalgia value. Disney's got that, first for kids, then through buying up everybody else.
So as people go back to their dreary office jobs and have less time to watch TV they're going to keep the streaming service that lets them watch Star Wars whenever they want and also put on something that will keep their kids quiet.
Re: The Content is unsustainable (Score:2)
Nostalgia only lasts for so long. Eventually people get tired of reboots of the same shit over and over.
Re:Capitalism is so dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
The model of perpetual growth in any system is unsustainable in the long term. Netflix is just finding that out sooner than most.
One of the things I find most annoying with Netflix though is the lack of classic content - where can I watch old M.A.S.H episodes? What about the Hoff version of Night rider? Twilight zone? All those B grade Sci fi movies? Conan the barbarian 1985? Caddy shack? so many old movies that I would love to watch but are just not available, uness I rent them for $3.50 per episode from Amazon or something.
It's been good to go through all the old Star Trek episodes, but there are so many more shows that could be on there - in fact with IMDB listing over a million movies, shorts and made for tv shows, clearly Netflix or any other streaming service with ti's few thousand has only a tiny fraction of all the stuff that has been made - which is a real shame. At the end of the day my eyeballs can only be glued to the content of one show at a time.
Unlike the days of TV when it wasn't exactly clear what any individual was watching, with streaming services they can know exactly which paying accounts are watching what - and should be able to divert royalty payments accordingly to whatever IP owner happens to be able to attract my viewing. There's really no reason why all this old content shouldn't be available. Sure, I can understand mabey a studio wanting to limit distribution rights for new stuff, but for all the old stuff, it's a waste that it is not more available.
Re:Capitalism is so dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
The model of perpetual growth in any system is unsustainable in the long term. Netflix is just finding that out sooner than most.
It's investors that need to learn this. (and sales managers, etc...)
Re: Capitalism is so dumb (Score:2)
Not really. The cheap money that is available in most developed economies is only borrowing from the future. A company justifies the crazy premiums like stock price being 100 times annual revenues, only by promising or exhibiting symptoms of stellar future growth : from where all the cheap money is being borrowed.
If you want valuations like 30 years, get interest rates and money supply also like those days. With current valuations, investors are absolutely right to demand endless exponential high growth.
Inflation (Score:2)
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You are right. The "money supply" that has been increased, mostly goes to the rich, well-connected people. So the potential customers of Netflix are not beneficiaries of it.
Though I was only replying from the perspective of the potential investors in Netflix, which are every bit benefited by the money supply.
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What are you talking about?
Your thinking is shallow and has a religious nature to it resembling dogma.
What are *you* talking about? It was an opinion -- from an actual investor, who invests for the long-haul.
You don't need to be a presumptuous dick in your response.
The investors value the stock different now, precisely because they KNOW that.
Many investors are still fickle and for dubious reasons, like lack of growth -- which is precisely why TFS/A noted:
One way the company has tried to offset its slowing growth ...
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One of the things I find most annoying with Netflix though is the lack of classic content
With close to 600 new scripted TV series coming out every year, how do you find time to watch classic stuff? (That's series, not episodes).
I get it some classic stuff is fun, but we are living in a world with more new content than ever before. There's basically always something new and interesting to suit someone available.
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Sure, but a higher proportion of it is miserable schlock than ever before. Decent writing seems rarer and rarer.
Meanwhile, if you watch classics, you can choose to watch only those things that were good enough to stand the test of time.
I signed up for Netflix back in 2012 or so, but now that they've settled into a pattern of hiking the price every year, I'm going to unsubscribe within a month or two.
$8 a month for access to much of the best of w
Re: Capitalism is so dumb (Score:2)
The one's that kill me are classic sci-fi. Rights to those should be cheap, like Zardos. I agree though generally the acting, writing, and sometimes directing is better with these older films. Frankly the original Aliens is a masterpiece but even Logan's run or Zardos are pretty amazing with the story being the main point that makes them great. Even classic comedy often is rather beautiful.
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Sure, but a higher proportion of it is miserable schlock than ever before. Decent writing seems rarer and rarer.
Citation needed. Did you go through all 600 series last year and rate them? Or did you just take a couple which were advertised to you and use that to draw you conclusion?
Also why isn't your post full of ASCII art Swastikas? I looked on Slashdot the other day and saw some ASCII art Swastikas and therefore all Slashdot posts are nothing but ASCII art Swastikas obviously!
Re: Capitalism is so dumb (Score:2)
Precisely due to this oversupply of shows, it makes no sense to limit oneself to watching only the recent shows. Shows (entertaining videos) are being recorded for a century, mostly accelerating over that time. By limiting our selection to recent stuff, we forgo a lot of good stuff.
And many people, in certain frames of mind, prefer re-watching old shows than watching a new one.
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So if unsustainable growth is not sustainable, the share price will drop to something that is sustainable. Is that a problem? Yeah. Is that a huge deal? No.
I read this earlier in the week and it does a good (Score:2)
job of illustrating the why of what you're saying. [blogspot.com]
Take that along with the fact that most of the market movers are Hedge Funds (mostly momentum traders [investopedia.com] and massive firms handling retirement accounts which are mostly indexes, and it makes a lot of sense.
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Shareholders don't care purely about profit; they want growth because they want more profit. If Netflix doesn't grow, it's doomed to fail.
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Shareholders don't care purely about profit; they want growth because they want more profit. If Netflix doesn't grow, it's doomed to fail.
The stock price going down by some percent doesn't cause the company to fail.
It has no effect at all on the operations of a profitable company.
It is only even a problem when it is a startup that is losing money, because they'll have to issue new shares for funding, and the lower price means they have to issue more new shares, which further lowers the price. But a profitable company? They're not issuing new shares, so it doesn't affect them at all.
Don't be a shrill idiot like Chicken Little.
Re: Capitalism is so dumb (Score:2)
Declining stock price puts them at risk of being acquired . Execs and other employees have a fair portion of their compensation in stock also, and may jump ship. So, it would affect them.
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That's complete nonsense, getting acquired isn't a harm to the company, stockholders have to vote on accepting an offer, or not.
Executive compensation is unsutainable (Score:5, Insightful)
What's unsustainable here? So long as netflix is turning a profit it will have no problem chugging along. It doesn't really need any more investor money because it is stable.
Wall Street is a cancer that should be marginalized, instead, we've let it metastasize into things like decision-maker compensation. Don't get me wrong, I made 6 figures off my Wall Street Bets last year. Watching my stocks rise and fall each day, I know it's just a casino, though. I know that it's harmful to society in the long term and I am active in it because I know that someday my livelihood will be negatively impacted by this cancer, so I am bracing myself financially.
OK, so a bunch of sociopaths set up a casino that is mostly a scourge, but is useful for retirement accounts or passive income for the well off...not a huge deal... the problem is my CEO and every director down to the employees at my company are rewarded, some nearly exclusively, by share price.
Many great American companies were run into he ground in the name of chasing unsustainable growth. It's a system that penalizes you for winning. As the author said, eventually Netflix convinces every adult with the means to afford a subscription to buy their disappointing streaming service (much bigger fan of HBOMax, myself)...and they've won. They've beat the game. They've mastered streaming. There's no room to grow....but that's not enough for the Wall Street overlords. They demand more growth...so now the company needs to do stupid endeavors to grow. Why? because the entire justification of investment banks is to make a company grow in value. They're not there to run businesses well or profitably...just to make them swell and chase fads like blockchain, crytpo, AR, whatever doomed to fail endeavor that's a distraction from what works and what they should be doing.
The cancer is so bad that if a CEO says, nope, sorry, fuck you...we stream shows and movies and will continue to do so...fuck off...let Microsoft, Sony, Apple, Valve, etc deal with gaming, we'll just focus on making our customers delighted because that's what we know and that's what we do best....he will get ousted by the board of directors. We penalize leaders for focusing on running their business well in a way that will lead to long-term prosperity and growth if there is not enough short-term growth to satisfy the parasites and reward them for driving them into the ground in the name of short-term growth.
Capitalism has been hijacked by Wall Street, hence the decline of so many great American companies that should have been powerhouses, like the automakers, American computer makers (HP/Dell) or giant retailers like Sears.
Infinite growth is unsustainable. Branching out into stupid directions in the name of growth is dangerous. The problem is Wall Street gets paid during the growth phase, sells off, and the rest of us foot the bill...the laid off workers collecting unemployment, the customers who lose their favorite providers of goods and services...the rest of us who are laid off while a foreign company, not so beholden to parasitic investors, eats our lunch and marketshare.
We desperately need to decouple executive compensation from stock price. It really should be based on profits, not growth. We need a proper capitalist model, not a casino one.
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But it also does still serve its real purpose of providing capital for economic growth. Look at the Rivian IPO. Rivian has a great product that can probably sell in the millions, but they need billions of dollars to scale production to do that. They have an IPO, now they can build the factories and hire the people to make what people want.
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Sears got finished off by amazon, the catalog business model just doesn't work anymore.
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Was it murdered by greedy investors? Sort of. "In the 1980s, the company began to diversify into non-retail entities such as buying Dean Witter and Coldwell Banker in 1981. In 1984, Prodigy was launched as a joint venture with IBM, and the Discover credit card was introduced in 1985."
In an attempt to maintain "growth" they started spending money attempting to diversify into markets and fields other than retail. In short, they took their eye off the ball.
Re:Executive compensation is unsutainable (Score:5, Insightful)
Real life example:
Circa 2004, long before Amazon took over the retail sector, I purchase an automotive timing light at Sears. It cost around fifty bucks.
During the transaction, the fresh out of high school sales clerk says "phone number." Note the demanding tone.
I, not wanting Sears on my phone trying to sell me an extended warranty, say "no."
Clerk says "phone number please"
I say "no."
Clerk, jumping up her shrill a notch, says "Sears has a policy of collecting the phone numbers of all customers."
I say "I know, I don't care."
Clerk, now half panicked, says "what should I put in, what should I put in?"
I say "Put in your phone number, put in the stores phone number, put in all zeros, I don't care."
Parts department manager steps up and says "put in all zeros."
Multiply this situation by a million or so and you have no more customers.
The sales clerk did not behave this way because she had the hots for me and wanted my phone number. She behaved this way because she was told that if she wanted o keep her job she would need to get the phone number of every single customer who made a purchase.
Sears earned their failure.
Amazon checks their customers' phone numbers (Score:3)
Really ? So the erstwhile Sears customers buy from Amazon, which not only asks rudely the phone number of their customers, but there is no option to put in the store's or clerk's phone number or all zeros. Amazon will check if you can quickly enter a 6 digit number sent to that phone number. And it will insist on saving their customers' credit card details, no opt out possible.
I call bullshit on customers caring about their own privacy. If anything, Sears seems to not have collected enough phone numbers wit
Re:Executive compensation is unsutainable (Score:4, Insightful)
Sears died because they decided to stop treating their customers like customers and start treating them like profit centers. . . .
It probably didn't help that Sears killed its catalog business right before the boom in online shopping because some MBA lackey decided it wasn't profitable ENOUGH. Just let that sink in. The catalog business was profitable, but it wasn't generating enough profit. Sears was perfectly positioned for online shopping and it pissed it away because of the shortsightedness, failure of imagination, and herd mentality that totally permeates most C-suites in American publicly traded companies.
Look up Eddie Lampert for more info re Sears (Score:4, Insightful)
You mention Sears, but was it murdered by greedy investors? Or by WalMart?
By Amazon, not Walmart, and that was because Sears's management was too short-sighted to grab the online market when they had the opportunity, before Amazon ate their lunch. Walmart had gotten bigger than Sears by 1990, but if you wanted items of a reasonably decent quality, you still went to Sears or Penney's. Sadly, that's no longer the case.
Eddie Lampert murdered Sears with his parasitic vision and chasing short term profits. Look it up. There are experts who explain it much better than I ever can.
/. readers, is a better example. I can blindly recommend to someone "buy DeWalt" and they will get something good. It may not be the best, but it always is close to the best and never really overpriced. It's not ALWAYS the best quality or best deal, but more often than not it is and you can just trust them.
If you're American, ask your parents. Sears used to be awesome. WalMart was garbage. If you wanted something of high quality, you went to a place like Sears. Ask anyone into cars or DIY/HomeImprovement over 40 about craftsman tools.
Even when I first got into woodworking, Craftsman was on the decline, but had a comprehensive catalog with a nice following. They used to be a name that you could trust, like DeWalt or Apple. You can debate individual items about DeWalt or Apple or debate the price, but if you buy something from Apple, you know it will work to a consistent degree. You can blindly just buy from Apple and the Apple Store. You'll overpay, but you know the device will work. The cables will work (won't last, but will work well until you fray them). The cases will work. You can generally blindly buy Apple and everything will work as expected.
DeWalt, less commonly known to most
Sears used to be the same way. You could just buy a tool or appliance from them and know you won't get ripped off and you'd get good warranty service. Home Depot and WalMart may be cheaper, but there is always a market for folks who want to pay more to be treated better and get better quality. In many ways, Best Buy is like that. They're never my first choice, but I know I can buy decent stuff there and they're thriving despite stiff competition from Amazon, Target, etc. People want to walk in and see a TV before buying it. They want to browse aisles to get their cables or chargers or whatever.
Sears should have been where Best Buy is today. They should have been like the fancy dept stores that are still doing well even though I'll never shop there. There's no reason they couldn't have taken on Amazon, Lowes, and Home Depot and carved out a nice little niche.
Eddie Lampert failed them. He had a great opportunity and blew it. There are many other companies in American history that had strong positions, great talent, and even great success...but then the investors got their tentacles in them and made them fail. They focused on short-sighted decisions, often on chasing low price or new markets rather than doing what they do well.
The popular belief is that we were out-competed by Asia...but in truth, our parasitic Wall Street culture was strangling us...making it much easier for Asia to get ahead, particularly in consumer-facing goods. They chased trends blindly, like outsourcing and globalization...often hiring firms they were on the board of directors for. They looted companies, but always ensured they were compensated. Very few companies have had felt the touch of Baine Capital and thrived 10 years after Baine was done picking the carcass.
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The problem is that companies rarely pay dividends anymore and CEOs are mostly compensated in stock. So they way they make money is doing whatever they can to show "growth" so the stock goes up in price.
Unfortunately we don't incentivize maintaining a steady state.
Re: Capitalism is so dumb (Score:2)
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True, but at the same time even after their precipitous drop, they are by market cap a '176 billion dollar company'. Market cap is flawed to be sure, but 41% drop in stock value may not mean investors think *that* little of it, just less than they did.
Investors are chasing growth and switching over to investments with more patential (and frequently higher risk), but netflix has plenty of resources to sustain their position and plenty of investment dollars still in play for a more stable expectation.
Re:Capitalism is so dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
For Wall Street, all growth is good. More growth is better. It doesn't matter how it come about. Even unsustainable growth is good, because insiders know when the bottom will fall out and sell at the right time, letting the price fall so they can buy back in at the bottom. The long term vision of the company isn't all that important, so long as there's a storyline of growth that can be supported somehow.
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This is an excellent summary of capitalism.
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Don't forget the next chapter, in which some shady Wall Street investment firm does a forced buyout with borrowed capital, leaving Netflix with crippling debt and no choice but to file for bankruptcy.
Stay tuned.
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Nice FP. My answer is that it's an insane problem because there is no solution. The "need" for more profit has no end point. There is always a bigger number, and therefore there will never be a "solution" of enough profit.
Though these days the stock prices need to be defined with imaginary numbers. Completely detached from reality. (Trying to sell off the rest of my shares now... Most of them purchased years ago before I understood what a sad joke the stock market had become.)
Re:Capitalism is so dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Revenue != Profit (Score:2)
Source: Netflix 2021 Q4 Earnings [q4cdn.com]
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Revenue for their latest quarter was $7.7 billion but their net profit was $607 million. Actual free cash flow was minus $569 million. Even after the recent drop the company still has a market valuation of $176 billion. That puts them at a forward P/E of 72, which is well above their current growth. And that's assuming you even believe the accounting they use to get to net earnings vs cash flow - GAAP has lots of "gaps".
Source: Netflix 2021 Q4 Earnings [q4cdn.com]
You're pretending to understand their financial statements, but you either don't or you're intentionally cherry-picking to tell a narrative.
Their YoY revenue growth was 16%. Their operating margin was 8.2%, their Q1-22 forecast operating margin is 22.3%. Their Q4 results were as forecast.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/e... [sec.gov]
The reason the stock price is going down is because it was one of the stocks being used as an artificial safe haven during the pandemic, because gold doesn't move counter to the market anymo
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You're an idiot. You can't even figure out what my point is. You just instantly knee-jerk to thinking that anybody that points out flaws in what you said must believe in whatever you think the Other Side believes in.
You're a complete fucking idiot. Of course the bubble is popping. That's what I just described. The stock bubble is popping, but that doesn't mean Netflix is losing money. It just means people who invested in growth stocks with irrational P/E are losing their lunch. Netflix has massively incre
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I never claimed Netflix was losing money - I listed their net earnings in my original post, and described how investors should be wary about the leeway GAAP provides companies in attributing cash flow and ex
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Stock investors are usually more forward thinking, and probably see the writing on the wall for Netflix. Subscription prices are going up, while the quality and quantity of new programming is going down. This is eventually going to cost them subscribers, especially in markets where you can get Hulu and Disney+ for "free" with your cell phone plan.
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Product lifecycle. Like it or not, slowing growth is usually followed by stagnation and stagnation is almost always followed by decline. A ROM construct may live forever, but companies don't.
Re: Capitalism is so dumb (Score:2)
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The current value of Netflix shares is because of investors who are on growth. If Netflix didnt present as a growth stock, but rather as a stable investment .. that too is worth something but not its current stock price. When you invest, your portfolio should consist of some stable investments and other ones that are betting on growth. Netflix was getting the growth portion of people’s investing. The stable investment share prices usually have a certain ratio related to the companys revenue or profit.
It's anti-capitalism, it's speculation (Score:3)
What you're calling dumb (expecting the revenue and therefore stock price to always grow) is very much NOT capitalism. In fact, it IGNORES the basic principle of capitalism. What's dumb is market speculation. Hoping that the stock keeps going up is speculation. Capitalism tells you why that will NOT happen.
Capital is productive resources. Things like factories and solar farms that produce something good.
Capitalism is the idea that if you put in the resources (effort, money, time) to build something producti
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But they can't expect huge gains by speculating in the stock! It's useless! /s
Re: Capitalism is so dumb (Score:2)
What's unsustainable about it? Wall Street just likes growth. If a company doesn't keep growing, there isn't anything wrong with that so long as they remain profitable. Netflix isn't having any profitability problems. This isn't a capitalism thing either, it's just wall street politics. Netflix could also issue dividends in lieu of growth if it really needed investor money, but it pretty much doesn't at this point.
Re: Capitalism is so dumb (Score:2)
Stop thinking about verticals (Score:4, Interesting)
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they have all the infrastructure in place to absolutely dominate the market.
They don't, they run on AWS.
Multiple profiles will be monetized (Score:2)
Netflix's problem is the same as Google's (Score:5, Insightful)
Netflix has the same problem that Google has: they refuse to stick with something long enough to make it good. Netflix has pivoted to being mostly an original content provider (because they had to, since publishers have created their own independent streaming services), but they essentially refuse to take chances on anything. They require their shows to pitch multiple seasons, then produce one season that inevitably ends on some form of cliff-hanger, then see it didn't pull in new subscribers, and then drop the show.
Because they're so quick to kill shows, they frequently kill them before they get an audience. We've gone from Netflix being the company that revives shows that traditional publishers unfairly killed to traditional providers reviving Netflix shows that were canceled before their time.
All this adds up to people being unwilling to give Netflix originals a chance. Why bother investing 10 hours into watching a Netflix original if it's just going to end on a cliffhanger that will never be resolved?
It's a lot like whenever Google introduces a new service. Do you trust that the service will stick around for more than a few years? Or do you expect that Google will pull the rug out from under you and either kill it or rework it in a few years? Even if the service is good, do you want to take the chance? Same thing with Netflix. Even if a new Netflix Original is good, chances are it will be canceled anyway, because it didn't grow the audience Netflix wanted in the first week.
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Netflix has pivoted to being mostly an original content provider (because they had to, since publishers have created their own independent streaming services), but they essentially refuse to take chances on anything. They require their shows to pitch multiple seasons, then produce one season that inevitably ends on some form of cliff-hanger, then see it didn't pull in new subscribers, and then drop the show.
So if I understand you correctly, they refuse to take chances on anything, and that is demonstrated by taking chances on something and pulling out when it fails?
You may want to re-think your point. Netflix is nothing if not excellent at giving us content that traditionally wouldn't be touched with a 10 ft pole.
All this adds up to people being unwilling to give Netflix originals a chance.
Huh? What makes you say that? Are you so obsessed with being inside a comfort bubble that you will only support a show where the writers aim to keep it going in perpetuity? Hell the fuck no, the insan
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So if I understand you correctly, they refuse to take chances on anything, and that is demonstrated by taking chances on something and pulling out when it fails?
They're not taking chances on it, though. Much like Google, they're looking for instant successes. If they release something and it doesn't immediately have millions of viewers, they declare it a failure and give up on it.
Huh? What makes you say that? Are you so obsessed with being inside a comfort bubble that you will only support a show where the writers aim to keep it going in perpetuity?
You miss the part where I mentioned Netflix requires shows to pitch at least two seasons? Netflix demands that the shows they create be intended to run over multiple seasons. They then don't commit to actually producing them over those seasons. This leads to just about every Netflix show e
Three Nails: The Office, Disney, and Video Stores (Score:2)
Say what you will about the show, but I know lots of people that would put on The Office just to have as a default background show if nothing else interesting was on. As soon as that went to Peacock, that was nail #1.
Disney+:
With its juggernaut lineup of exclusive films, especially movies often played over and over and over by fans, people shifted from Netflix to Disney for certain selections. You won't see those on Netflix.
Video Stores:
This has long been a problem of Netflix. When vid
Guys (Score:2)
This entire stock fall is due to the fact that I cancelled my Netflix account. Next time they will know better than to start removing my Star Trek series and raising prices at the same time.
Take that you fiend!
what this illustrates (Score:3)
...Is that the idea that a company can grow forever, and must do so to keep the interest of investors, is asinine.
Never should have happened... (Score:2)
It's dead Jim... (Score:2)
Netflix is currently like a ghost town populated by movies no one wants, originals that were successful but killed off, and originals that no one wants to watch.
People who were paying attention noticed this a year ago.
Why I will ditch NFLX (Score:2)
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Um... you might want to watch Money Heist.
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The first two seasons have been mildly entertaining, even though it was difficult to keep suspension of disbelief. It turned to shit with the third season.
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It sure as hell didn't turn to "yay capitalism."
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These days, some way, some how, the stories all come back to trusting our liberal bourgeoisie rulers to come through for us in the end
Have you seen Don't Look Up?
A better question (Score:2)
Are they LOSING customers? If so, then they need to be asking why. It was pretty fait accompli that streaming would balkanize content once it surpassed cable and satellite services. IMHO, the content companies are still annoyed that they can no longer charge people for a full record album just so they can get the one song that they like and have been desperately trying to find ways to suck more money out of the consumer. Streaming is the new crappy album. At the moment, people are willing to ante up fo
I know why (Score:2)
Edge Servers (Score:2)
A stock's price has nothing to do with "reason". (Score:2)
A stock that does not pay dividends has no intrinsic value, other than to convey some fractional ownership which is ultimately meaningless unless you own a majority or supermajority of them.
Therefore, the real reason why Netflix stock is tanking is because of one simple thing: People are dumping the stock to cash out.
Why they are dumping the stock in greater proportion to other tech stocks is a mystery to everyone except huge retail investors and institutional traders who deal in massive volume.
Any other co
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We would drop it in a heartbeat if they did add ads. Same goes for the competition.
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Most, if not all, of the competition already have ads. Some of them have a version with ads (which you still typically have to pay for) and a higher priced version without ads. Others, like Apple TV+, just come with ads period. (And yes, Apple TV+ is an actual competitor, it turns out that Apple provides access to it on non-Apple devices. But even on Apple devices, you get unskippable ads.)
We're already on our way back to cable where you have to pay to receive ads.
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Yeah, but the success of cable shows that most people won't.
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Where do you think the cable companies would be today if they didn’t/couldn’t offer internet service? I think that is the real comparison.
Sure, all companies do a maximum profit calculation/analysis and often have bad assumptions factored in. The reality is today there is a lot of competition for eyeball-hours and the associated spending. Netflix specifically is in a difficult position especially compared to Amazon, Google, Disney, and Apple, and do not likely have the market strength to surv
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Where do you think the cable companies would be today if they didn’t/couldn’t offer internet service?
Gone, of course, but not because of advertising.
People are weirdly willing to adapt to advertising. Some people even like it, oddly enough. Maybe because people watching Netflix/TV are mostly trying to kill time.
It's not just advertising though, it's any kind of delay. If you take your build machine at work, and double the time it takes to build anything, developers will complain bitterly for a week or two. After a couple months though, they will act as if nothing is wrong, and even be surprised if you ment
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Kiss ad-free Netflix goodbye. They will yield to investors and start inserting advertising. Like everything else, it will turn into television. But, make hay while the sun still shines.
All streaming services I know of which have advertisements also have an ad-free option. If Netflix ever started showing ads it would be with a new subscription which is $2-5 less per month, but includes ads.
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The Fed, as usual, is late to the game. They should have trailed off monetary injection years ago and started to raise rates in 2019. This would have served two purposes. First, companies would have to get their act together and survive in the free market, capitalist society we supposedly are by not being able to rely on the government to keep propping them up.
Second, by raising rates earlier, things would have slowed down sooner, but more gradually.
Instead, here we are, again, getting ready to chase the
Re:the Fed (Score:4, Informative)
Your post is nonsense. You appear to be complaining both that the Fed allowed too much inflation and that now that they step in to reign it in, that's bad too! The Fed's job is to keep inflation around 2%/yr, though really it's a bit more complex than that because not all prices change together. During 2020, despite all the Fed could do, inflation was 0%. So, guess what, in order to come back to a 2%/yr target, it needs to be 4% in 2021. That's just normal. It turned out more like 5%, but it's that extra 1% that the Fed is claiming is temporary. But now they have to raise the cost of borrowing so that it comes back down to around 2% in 2022. This is totally normal monetary policy.
The real manipulators are people like you who try to distort completely normal monetary policy implemented during economic swings into some sort of crazy implication that the Fed shouldn't exist or is doing something nefarious.
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They don't count previous years, and accumulate it, if inflation hits 10% will there goal be -6% the next year? I highly doubt it..
I know the math is slightly wrong, should really be -5.4% (1.02*1.02) = (1.1*x).
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They don't count previous years, and accumulate it, if inflation hits 10% will there goal be -6% the next year? I highly doubt it..
Of course not. The goal is not to maintain a long term average, but a target at any given time that ads up to 2%. If you balls it up one month, you don't overcorrect the following, you just aim for the 2%. The economy as designed in the west depends on slight inflation, it's not about the value of money, but keeping the economy ticking.
Do you want to see your entire economy crash and burn? Deflation is a great way of doing that and its almost universally associated with periods of catastrophically high unem
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Deflation is a great way of doing that and its almost universally associated with periods of catastrophically high unemployment and stagnation or worse, recessions.
This is not really true, because there are very, very few eras of recorded deflation. There was some in the 1880s, but the economy also grew during that period.
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This is not really true, because there are very, very few eras of recorded deflation. There was some in the 1880s
The fuck are you talking about. The largest and most catastrophic period was in the 20th century. You can figure out when by playing my word game: Finish this sentence "I didn't learn history and therefore I somehow don't know about the economic catastrophe known as The Great ..."
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You are worried about 'woke' shows on Netflix. Sure there are, but have you seen anything by Disney in the last, oh, 40 years ?!? Is there a single drop of blood ever on a Disney movie ?
Mulan has a scene where Ping is slashed with a sword and blood leaks out from under the armor.
In Up!, Mr. Frederickson hits the worker who moved the mailbox. When the worker moves his hand, blood is seen on his forehead. One can quibble about this movie because it was made by Pixar but under license for Disney.
In Tangled, Eugene gets stabbed by Mother Gothel and blood is shown.
Hercules bleeds from his mouth when beat up by the Cyclops.
Sleeping Beauty shows blood coming from the dragon after it's been stabb
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Any specific examples you can provide?
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