Netflix has sent out another wave of layoff notices as it contends with plunging subscriber counts and a stock price that’s tumbled 70% since January.
The company reportedly about 150 workers on Tuesday, just under 2% of its global 11,000-person workforce. The layoffs spanned departments, though U.S.-based employees were the primary targets. It’s the latest sign of trouble for the company, which had emerged as a beacon of hefty paychecks and generous benefits--even by Big Tech standards.
“Our slowing revenue growth means we are also having to slow our cost growth as a company,” the California-based company told CNBC. “These changes are primarily driven by business needs rather than individual performance, which makes them especially tough as none of us want to say goodbye to such great colleagues.”
It’s the second round of layoffs to hit the streaming giant in recent weeks. In late April, Netflix also shuttered its five-month-old editorial arm called Tudum, laying off at least 10 writers and 25 marketers. Many of the affected workers were former journalists, who remarked they’d been “aggressively” recruited by Netflix with promises of greater stability and pay.
More job cuts could be on the horizon given recent turbulence at the company. The tide began shifting in mid-April with Netflix’s quarterly earnings report. The streamer admitted that subscriber counts had fallen by 200,000-–the first paid customer count drop for the company in a decade. Netflix also predicted it could lose another 2 million subscribers in coming months.
The company’s shares now trade at about $190 apiece, down from nearly $600 when the year began. That’s nearly a 70% discount. By comparison, the S&P 500 market index of the world’s largest publicly traded companies has fallen by some 13% in the same period.
Netflix isn’t the only tech giant to cut workers as the stock market cools. Twitter’s CEO recently ousted two top executives and said the company will freeze hiring and rescind some job offers as Elon Musk’s uncertain takeover deal hangs overhead. Companies like Amazon, Apple and Tesla could be next, as they’ve all watched their stock prices fall by more than 20% in recent weeks. And a slew of smaller startups are bracing themselves for turbulence ahead, once again weighing layoffs as a means of controlling burn rates and attracting new capital.
