2022 seems to be the year of bad luck for Netflix, the global production and broadcasting giant.

For the second time in two months, the network announced - yesterday, Thursday - a new layoff of a number of its employees, as it abandoned more than 300 employees from its huge team around the world.

216 of the affected employees were in the United States, with 30 laid off in Asia Pacific, 53 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and 17 in Latin America, according to the memo sent by Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, co-CEOs of Netflix.

Increase your investment in content

"We know these two rounds of layoffs have been very difficult for everyone, causing a lot of anxiety and uncertainty. We plan to return to our business as usual more frequently in the future. We continue to invest significant amounts in content, and over the course of the 18 months," the memo reads. Next, it is planned that our employee base will grow by about 1,500 employees, to reach 11.5 thousand employees" in the network.

A Netflix spokesperson said - in a statement - that the layoffs were due to "increasing broadcast costs in conjunction with slowing revenue growth."

Not the first layoff

With the latest layoff, the number of those laid off by the company has reached more than 450 employees within two months.

In May, Netflix laid off about 150 employees due to "slowing revenue growth," a spokesperson for the network said at the time.

Of those affected employees last month, 106 were working in the network's office in Los Angeles, in addition to a number of employees in the animation department, and Netflix also cut its partial contracts with dozens of workers.

So how did the broadcast giant get to this situation?

strong competition

The move comes as Netflix continues to grapple with the increasingly difficult and competitive streaming market, as it competes with tech giants such as Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV, as well as huge studio platforms such as Disney Plus and Apple TV. Hulu, Paramount, and HBO.

Netflix revealed that it lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022 (Pixels)

Subscriber Exit

The last time Netflix revealed a loss of subscribers was in late 2011. For much of the past decade, the company has been seen as an amazing growth story that has led the industry toward a present focused on webcasting, but on April 19, Netflix revealed that it had lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, which is far less than its expectations for an increase in subscribers.

While the company - which has 222 million subscribers worldwide - expects to lose another two million subscribers this year.

Netflix stock declines

Since January 3, the first trading day of 2022, Netflix shares have fallen by about 70%, from $597.37 a share to $177.39 on Thursday.

Netflix experienced a downgrade in its stock rating, which changed the company's stock from "wait" to "sell" with a target price of $157.

A few days ago, Goldman Sachs analyst Eric Sheridan downgraded the company from "neutral" to "sell", lowering its share price target from $265 to $186.

Steps to stop the bleeding

The company announced that it is working on ways to eliminate password sharing, noting that about 100 million families share the service.

It has signaled a significant expansion outside its core subscription business model, by offering mobile games, including adaptations of its own series such as Gambit the Queen and La Casa de Babel.

New segment supports ads

One of the most important advantages of paid streaming platforms is that their subscribers do not have to watch ads, a feature that Netflix plans to partly abandon.

In addition to giving up its employees, the popular broadcasting platform plans to launch a new subscription segment that is cheaper than regular subscriptions, while making profits from the ads that it intends to broadcast on the platform.

"We've left a huge chunk of customers off the table, and they're the ones who say 'Hey, Netflix is ​​too expensive for me, and I don't mind advertising,'" said Ted Sarandos.

He continued, "We will not add ads to Netflix, but we will add an ad category for those who say, "I want a lower price, and I don't mind watching ads."

In addition to the Netflix crisis, it seems that the media sector - as well as the rest of the US economy - is being hit by recession fears that have pushed the markets into a bearish zone. Can Netflix and the entertainment and media sector survive?