Instead of people only talking about winners lets talk about losers. The position I'm most uncomfortable with in my portfolio is NFLX, I had two others that I sold this year 3M (MMM) and Simon Property Group (SPG). I try to stick with only selling a stock when I no longer fundamentally believe it has a strong competitive advantage with growth. I only have 100 shares of Netflix but I'm starting to think that it's best days are now behind it, but I just can't see Reed Hastings sitting on his laurels and not continuing to evolve the company. Gaming maybe? The international growth is still there but US subs is going to be stagnant at best.
I look at my own use and the anecdotal posts here on the forum that I think more subscribers are going to start subbing for the shows they want then canceling in the interim. Any thoughts on this one? Dump the market laggard or be more patient?
My personal opinion after some thought is NFLX best days are behind them. Using Disney as an example.
Right now, Disney and others give a small tiny percentage of their content to NFLX to stream off and on for a royalty fee. They recycle a lot of things. But when Disney has their content service up, ALL Disney content should be available ALL the time. Other studios, etc will follow suit. NFLX was a stepping stone to get where we're going which is....
I think we are entering the age we've all wanted for 30+ years and that's
alacarte cable TV, but in streaming form. There will be a lot of these streaming services, and every studio will have the content on their own servers and services. However, I do still think that netflix can have a role to play depending on how this plays out in that they can still be the *middle man* for these other services, where you pay netflix a monthly fee for their content, but also pay a additional fee to activate the other content (Disney content, Paramount content, Warner Brothers content, etc). That fee would be slightly higher than paying Disney or another provider directly, but you have a situation where netflix can be the central hub and interface for all of the other places. Other studios can link their servers into the netflix system, and netflix gets a small fee (from consumer most likely) for this ease of use. The cost structure would be something like... $7 per month for Netflix, $9 for Disney, $8 for WB, $7 for Paramount, etc. You total it all up and say it's going to be about $100 per month. Sounds like a hell of a lot more than what you pay today but a few things to note: 1. I see ALL content from the studios being available, at ALL times. 2. It's still less than a typical cable bill. 3. No contracts, and it's alacarte, so you can adjust these at will.
Alternatively, the customer could just get the Disney app, and the PAramount app, and the WB app, etc and pay say $0.50 less per month per service, but have to deal with every one having their own app, own login, etc. Netflix can play a role that ties all of it together.
Sorry if I didn't explain this well. I am bad at these long-winded things and am not Lithose. But I think you get the general idea where I'm going with this.
