Netflix's subscriber growth slowed as it looks to ads for revenue growth. Cheddar News breaks down why the company is one of the stocks of the year.

Looking Back at Netflix as One of the Stocks of the Year

it's that time where the final days of 2022 time flies. As of today, we're looking at netflix as the one time streaming king has faced a pretty big existential crisis one after another, turns out in 2022. So after years of steady double digit growth that shot a share price up to an all time high of about $700. In late 2021 Netflix started reporting stalling subscriber growth in the process, losing its firm grip on the streaming space while the company had 207 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2021. And since then it's only gained a net total of 15 million subscribers with the tally now around 223 million. So when investors saw the dwindling growth, they started to jump ship from Netflix and the streaming has had a tough time convincing potential investors that better days are ahead. Now, the stock plummeting in 2022 down 47%. And the main issue right now for Netflix is competition. So gone are the days where it's biggest competitor was traditional TV or gaming, but it now has to compete against a range of services from amazon prime Disney plus, HBO max, apple, tv plus, peacock paramount plus a host of many others. And if we take a look at the biggest gainers of new streaming subscribers in the third quarter of this year, amazon prime video and paramount plus leading the way with 14 and 30% respectively. While netflix actually was kind of near the bottom just 5%. So some of that growth obviously getting saturated, netflix losing its way as it spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a range of film and tv projects and the only way that it could recoup the money was through subscriptions. So in recent months netflix taking action to add another source of revenue. This time from advertising announcing a cheaper ad supported tier costing about $7 a month at less than half of what a normal netflix subscription costs. Also getting a boost from some big series like the Crown Stranger Things, season four, Harry and Meghan I just to name a few and while they add to your success is still up in the air, investors seem to think that it is welcome news. So all of this has allowed netflix to claw back and stem the tide of its share losses actually up looks like about 58% in the past six months. So that is actually in fact outperforming the broader market. So netflix taking aim at another challenge that it says is the corporate of some lost revenue. We know this one password sharing. This is a decades old issue I think for netflix probably decades plus, but it's taking a hard line approach on that front planning a crackdown on the practice next year and stream will reportedly allow subscribers to pay for sub accounts for their friends and family but with so much competition. Netflix now feels the pressure more than ever to keep churning out hit shows, hoping that a new action series is gonna make a big splash. You see here, Kaleidoscope coming out january 1st debuting on the new year, the show's plot will apparently change based on the order in which users watch the episodes and netflix, hoping that's gonna get people talking, bring kind of a fresh perspective to the service that has become a bit stale I think for some users, certainly the lack of production, you know, a steady flow of production, series and film production during the pandemic, I think kind of cool down all of the hype around netflix as well.