Netflix splits DVD and streaming business into separate companies, adds games

bobman1235

All right, this circular conversation is going nowhere. Enjoy being angry at every company on earth.

tonyb

BlueFox wrote: »

Where did I say a business should not make money? Answer: no where. I said a business should put the customer and employee first, not some ANALyst. Make a product people want (the hard part), put the customer first, treat your employees fair, and you will make tons of money. Pay your employees a decent salary with bonuses from your profit. Anything left over reinvest in the business for the future. Pay taxes to help the society that provides you with transportation infrastructure, fire, police, and other services. Then if there is any excess money you cannot get rid of then pay a dividend to the stockholders. If people have a problem with that business plan then fine, do not buy the stock.

I see....you just want to have control over how a buisness spends it's own money. Sounds like a page right out of an Ellizibeth Warren speech.
The whole purpose of a supposedly free society is to what ? Same old song and dance. Don't like how a company does buisness, treats it's employees, hoards cash, don't buy their product or their stock and go on your merry way. Is that so hard ?

Any buisness that doesn't pay proper attention to it's customers eventually will go out of buisness. Did we need to forward you a list of all the companies that have gone away because of that ? What a CEO makes has little to no bearing on the company as a whole. Is there bad practices among CEO's, executives, their pay and benefits....sure....you'd be a fool not to admit that. Doesn't make them all bad though....as some like to paint with a very broad brush. If it's bad enough, that company will eventually fail. That is if we can ever stop from bailing them out all the time.

Truelly Fox, I don't get your beef. Netflix made a poor buisness decision, realized it,and turned coarse. Why is this even a sore point with some ? Some buisnesses never realize their mistakes and eventually close their doors....so what, another one will pop up the next day. Thats the beauty of it all, you can take a risk, work your **** off and you still may or may not make it. Companies, the public ones anyway, have to focus on stock prices, anaylists, their financials, thats how they get others to invest in their company. The private companies do too, because someday they will want to either take that company public or sell it for a profit. Think the new buyer may want someone to look at their financials ?

Does any of this stuff get taught in college anymore ?

Gadabout

I don't have Netflix, but adding a comment to bandwidth caps.

The bandwidth caps are a total scam. Just away for the ISP's to limit content that might not be their own. They use the excuse of excess data usage and it drains their system. Networks, anywhere are built for max expected capacity if possible. If usage is being exceeded you upgrade and expand to handle the needs of the consumers. This applies to all Networks including power grid, internet, phone etc... .

Peak Capacity for internet, phone, and power grid usage is during business hours. You have all seen articles about the power usage and how some places get a discount for putting less stress on the power grid. Lowering their power consumption between the hours of 2 and 5p. Once the network is in place, it really doesn't cost more and use more resources if you are off peak (everyone is familiar with free nights and weekend calling). The same should apply to internet usage. If you want to cap or throttle me, it should be based on the peak hour consumption. I doubt me watching HBO Go at 2a in the morning is stressing the system or costing them anything more because I'm streaming large quantities of data every month.

Just my .02,
Scott

PS Excellent post PFB

exalted512

WWW.Woot.com
(Yes, its relevant)
-Cody

bobman1235

exalted512 wrote: »

WWW.Woot.com
(Yes, its relevant)
-Cody

A laptop?

txcoastal1

bobman1235 wrote: »

A laptop?

You can use it to cancel your Netflix acct:biggrin:

exalted512

bobman1235 wrote: »

A laptop?

Agreed. Reading is overrated. Evidently, so is looking at the pictures.
-Cody

sucks2beme

The point is, many company execs make choices based on short term stock gains(and bonuses)
instead of what's best for the company. My last employer (was at 100,000 employees)
is now gone, was mainly destroyed by the top four execs cooking the books to get big stock options
and bonuses. The next CEO had to clean it up, and the company/stock never recovered.
They held on 5 years before going bankrupt. I still don't know exactly why nobody went to jail.

tonyb

Every bushell has a few bad apples.

Outfitter03

Netflix stock fell another 35% today to $77.00. This is down from about $300 a share in July. Today's price drop was a reaction from the market over the mass exodus of customers and projected lower returns due to streaming licensing costs.

So this is a market loss of 1.17 billion dollars in 3 months. What would you have to do to get fired at work? What about the leadership of this company? Kinda like Politics, once you make it to the big leagues success and failure consequences come very slow and the accountability is very limited. Unfortunately the consequences are usually paid by others.

Polkie2009

They've been getting hammered ,had a good run and should have never gotten up so high, they they are feeling the house of pain. There appears to be no soft bottom so the stock continues to fall as investors are cutting their losses and taking their money elsewhere. noticed Amazon is getting hammered lately too.

engtaz

"1.17 billion dollars in 3 months" they should make that up with their new subscription rates. (SARCASTIC remark by me)

heiney9

I still use them, and before this whole mess, I would have been fairly loyal. Now, as soon as something better comes along, chances are I'll jump ship. Meaning they have lost me at the first opportunity a competator comes along and offers the same thing for less money or more benefits. I'm still in the "wait and see" crowd. Some of my streaming TV shows have disappeared recently (Dexter). No notice and no explanation. Perhaps if they sent me an email explaining why they could no longer stream something I would be a LOT more understanding.

One other thing that has me super annoyed is before if something became unavailable for streaming they would move that title to the bottom of my streaming queue under "not currently available". If it was something I really wanted to see I'd search for the DVD and add it to my DVD queue. Well is seems they no longer do that. So in the past month who knows how many titles just vanished from the streaming queue and since I havd about 150 in my queue, there is no way I can remember what I put in there.

It's really rather annoying now.

H9

maximillian

One of the issues with competitors is to ensure that they are on many devices like Netflix is. I have a Netflix client for my Wii, WD TV Live Plus, my LCD TV, and all my PC's. It seems as if Netflix is on more devices than other brands. So I would hate to see Netflix eventually lose out.

cfrizz

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And they have no one to blame but themselves. Their arrogance & greed has enraged people enough to leave with no doubt more leaving every day. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you should, and when you do that something that bites the millions of hands that feed you, don't be surprised if they all decide to bite back.

tonyb

cfrizz wrote: »

Their arrogance & greed has enraged people enough to leave with no doubt more leaving every day. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you should, and when you do that something that bites the millions of hands that feed you, don't be surprised if they all decide to bite back.

Very good Cathy, I can use that in the upcomming elections.

cfrizz

Sigh, you know we aren't supposed to talk politics Tony, and it has nothing to do with this conversation.

mantis

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

The reversal just shows a lack of commitment to a decision I guess. I'm happy with the move personally, but get why people question his judgement when he wavers on decisions like that.

Take Apple, for instance. People have been pressuring them for years to include Flash support on their products, and they've continually resisted, citing reasons that I don't agree with. But in interviews and such, Jobs basically said "Suck it, if you don't like it go buy something else, but we think our product is good enough that you'll still buy it, so we'll see you in line at the Apple store". That approach is going to alienate some people, but they're still fairly successful.

I can actually see the argument both ways, where standing your grand and listening to customers are both good decisions, and am glad they reversed it. One thing you can't argue though, looking at their stock clearly the changes over the last few months have been all bad and they need a new CEO

What I find even more Interesting about Steve Jobs , Apple and sucking it is they didn't skip a beat with no Flash Support. They sell more products then ever before , their stock is out of control and the company seems to have more money then our very own US Treasure. Thats amazing and I feel they are doing many things right.

Netflix as on top of the world. Every single device or just about has Netflix in it . I wouldn't have been shocked to see a Toaster with Netflix. Netflix knows they eff'd up big time. Just one look at their stock tells many stories. Many people left them and went with other services.
Netflix as lost some key streaming strong points and then raised there prices up a lot. If they would have increase the price by 5 or even 10% , I don't think as many people would have left. They also could have done a poll about splitting up the website. Maybe some people might have liked it to have 2 websites , who knows but delivery and communication is always key.
I have been a Netflix customer since the beginning. I really enjoy the service. I did drop Blu ray /DVD service and if I find something I like better then the streaming , I plan on leaving Netflix.

drselect

Couldn't resist bringing this thread back from the dead.
457% return on investment and thanks the CEO for his efforts.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/investing/2013/10/22/icahn-cuts-netflix-stake-in-half/?intcmp=HPBucket

AsSiMiLaTeD

It is nice to see a company realize the errors the make and try to right the ship and be rewarded for it. The ironic thing is that I've been contemplating a switch to Amazon lately because their selection seems to be more in line with what I watch. I may end up keeping both services if Netflix has content that I don't find on Amazon, but so far that's not the case.

I actually already have Amazon Prime so I've already paid for the service, just have not used it.

exalted512

I might actually join netflix or amazon soon for streaming. We're about to drop directv. I'm not looking to get in another contract and I'm also not looking to pay $90/mo. Probably be cancelling next week.
-Cody

tonyb

drselect wrote: »

Couldn't resist bringing this thread back from the dead.
457% return on investment and thanks the CEO for his efforts.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/investing/2013/10/22/icahn-cuts-netflix-stake-in-half/?intcmp=HPBucket

Stock prices are a separate issue in reality. Any Netflix owner of stock should be looking to take some profits off the table right now.

Stocks in general are so artificially over sold it's just crazy. The underlying fundamentals don't support such prices. The market shrugs off bad news like a case of fleas constantly. Could be the constant printing of money is influencing the markets to the tune of a trillion bucks a year being created and floated into the markets. Also seeing that the new Fed chair replacement is also a proponent of printing easy money, stocks are going to go north.

One has to remember, for every dollar printed out of thin air, the last dollar printed is worth less. It's a shell game, only there's no pea under any of the cups.

drselect

tonyb, the main motivation for me to post this was the fact that I wish I had bought when it was $58 a share. A $3000 investment would now be worth ~$1.4M. That goes along way to retirement. Also generally speaking I look at the stock market as the biggest legal pyramid scheme out there. And also of the mindset the fed is the main factor driving the price of stocks up. I ask my self a few times what is going to happen to all my money in my 401K when the fed stops buying stocks?

cnh

tonyb wrote: »

Stock prices are a separate issue in reality. Any Netflix owner of stock should be looking to take some profits off the table right now.

Stocks in general are so artificially over sold it's just crazy. The underlying fundamentals don't support such prices. The market shrugs off bad news like a case of fleas constantly. Could be the constant printing of money is influencing the markets to the tune of a trillion bucks a year being created and floated into the markets. Also seeing that the new Fed chair replacement is also a proponent of printing easy money, stocks are going to go north.

One has to remember, for every dollar printed out of thin air, the last dollar printed is worth less. It's a shell game, only there's no pea under any of the cups.

drselect wrote: »

tonyb, the main motivation for me to post this was the fact that I wish I had bought when it was $58 a share. A $3000 investment would now be worth ~$1.4M. That goes along way to retirement. Also generally speaking I look at the stock market as the biggest legal pyramid scheme out there. And also of the mindset the fed is the main factor driving the price of stocks up. I ask my self a few times what is going to happen to all my money in my 401K when the fed stops buying stocks?

Completely agree with Tony, above! Buy stock? Shoulda, woulda, coulda! The story of everyone's life. We're all late to the party because we don't have that INSIDER information. lol Market boys and girls never really play fair. Market models economists use are mostly fairy tale stories that don't take into account all the corruption and illegality that are the norm in every day trading!

cnh

vcwatkins

Not following return numbers above?

It may eventually be much worse than just inflation. All the QE must be unwound. It's not gonna be pretty when the sale-back begins, unless they forever do a sort of QE spin cycle, rotating the specific assets but never totally eliminate them from the balance sheet. Fed never ends programs like this.

I still feel pretty good re nflx and am still holding. The last Q numbers were pretty amazing and they're not even in huge markets overseas yet. Wish they would buy Gamefly though.

Craig

tonyb

Oh geez guys, by all means take advantage when you can, the big shots do. Point being, just as profits can be made out of thin air, so can loses. You can see money evaporate in a second, your money, the others will be hours ahead securing their profits from insider info. Never have all your eggs in one basket as they say, is all I'm sayin'.

tonyb

cnh wrote: »

Market boys and girls never really play fair. Market models economists use are mostly fairy tale stories that don't take into account all the corruption and illegality that are the norm in every day trading!

cnh

LOL.....SO TRUE. Look, certain segments of the market are purposely raised to attract investment, then purposely tanked to take all that money. The trick for the average Joe is getting out before the tank. Buy the dips, sell the highs. Look for a correction soon in the 1500-2000 points area of the DOW. Seriously gents, the Bulls have had it way past their usual time.

krabby5

" I still don't know exactly why nobody went to jail. "

really? Not lived in the US long? LOL

tonyb

Nobody went to jail because all of it is legal.....who makes the laws ? Who throws money at who to dictate those laws....leave loopholes ? Who has exempted themselves from insider trading ?

The markets are what they are, the game is rigged. Kinda like playing those carnival games, you never get the top prize, that huge stuffed animal, but they let you get away with a smaller token prize. That's not to say the average guy can't make money in the markets, they can and do, but it takes research, diligence, patience. Have to know when to hold and when to fold. If your doing it all yourself that is. The other way, having someone else do it all for you is another way of generating fee's, additional income for that firm. Your still at risk just as much if you had done it yourself. The advantage to some is that the firm makes suggestions based on their research....which at times is also bogus because they get paid to steer investments to certain stocks. The markets can be your best friend or worst enemy, but what it's not is a get rich quick scheme.

Regardless of why Netflix is up or down, you should take some profits, wait until it settles lower and hit it again. Sell the highs, buy the dips....that's how we play the carnival game of Wall Street.

schwarcw

Buy market funds every month. In the long run you will always buy more when the market is low than when it is high. If you are in for the long term you will make money. Trying to pick and choose is a game of chance. Most times you will lose.