Netflix lays off 300 more employees in latest round of job cuts

Streaming platform Netflix has had to lay off 300 of its employees after it reported a decline in revenue at the start of 2022, per its co-chief executive Ted Sarandos.

The latest move comes a month after it cut 150 jobs due to the reported losses. The current layoffs account for almost 4 percent of its workforce and most of them involve its employees in the US.

The company reported in February that it lost 200,000 subscribers globally, adding that a further decline of 2 million users in the upcoming quarter is also expected.

It attributed the losses to a number of factors such as the war in Ukraine, increasing competition from other streaming services, economic slowdown and the large number of people who share their accounts with non-paying users.

The company also recently reported a slump in its stock price due to poor earnings and slow revenue growth. This is the first time in ten years that the company lost a large number of users, which is also due in part to the closure in Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine.

"While we continue to invest significantly in the business, we made these adjustments so that our costs are growing in line with our slower revenue growth," Netflix said in a statement on Thursday. It added that it is continuing to hire for other roles and areas.

Ted Sarandos, the company's co-chief executive at a press conference in Cannes said that Netflix is in talks with several firms to introduce advertising to the service to make up for the losses and to be able to offer lower-priced subscriptions.

Several media reports had earlier claimed that the company is in talks with Alphabet Inc's Google and Comcast Corp's NBC Universal for a potential partnership. However, none of the companies have confirmed the news.

"We're not adding ads to Netflix as you know it today. We're adding an ad tier for folks who say 'Hey, I want a lower price and I'll watch ads'," Sarandos said at Cannes Lions.

The development comes in the backdrop of reports claiming that the labour market boom the US witnessed during Covid-19 pandemic is coming to an end. The tech sector is especially hit with several start-ups cutting their work force, per a report in BBC.