NFLX

Anyone looking at Netflix at these valuations? Seems OK quantitatively, moat? Some of the super investors have been buying in the last few qtrs.

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You could buy a basket of streaming companies as they have all taken a beating. I’ve bought Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery but not Netflix. Maybe I should add a third leg to this beast of a bad bet. I preferred PARA and WBD because they are multichannel companies while NFLX is a pure streaming play.

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Too hard pile. Right now there are more streaming services putting out more good content than I can possibly watch. I sign up for whichever service(s) are steaming shows I want to watch and when the show is over I move onto a different service. I have to imagine the industry will consolidate somehow. How that will look, I have no idea.

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Seems like a great asset light business model. I use NF myself and also have Amazon Prime. It’s the kinda thing that’s cheap enough to keep subscribed if you like your series etc. I’d rather that than go to the cinema nowadays. Obs the dip is on the worry about subscriber numbers.

I sign up for whichever service(s) are steaming shows I want to watch and when the show is over I move onto a different service.

This may be the model. There are three services we keep–Netflix, Amazon Prime, and DirectTV streaming. I would cut DirectTV but I need it mostly for sports. We sign up for HULU, Disney, Apple, etc. based on the shows we want to watch. After streaming them, we cut until the next time. Hulu and others have caught on and are raising monthly prices. I think, eventually, all streaming services will settle on a pricing mechanism that works despite the churn. The reason to prefer PARA and WBD is that they both provide the streaming service and the content. Netflix is discovering that content provision is hard, and costly.

I think a basket approach will work here as streaming entertainment is not going away.

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We dropped Uverse TV that was costing $160/mo, replaced with DirectTV Streaming for $65/mo.
Signed up for HULU at $1.99/mo (for 12 months).
Signed up for Peacock (free) and Tubi (also free).

DirectTV has commercials, as does Hulu. Peacock & Tubi have commercials. I guess you can pay a bit more and get commercial free.

Wife says that these last three cover just about everything that Direct does. They have more content than we have hours in the day to watch.

Except Direct also has local channels–but we rarely watch the local channels anyway, We’ll probably drop it one of these days.

Slightly off topic but i think is relevant from the consumer.

For me, streaming services are a time-sucking tangled mess…there are just so many darn options, most of which don’t offer me enough to subscribe long term. Not going to pay $5-$15/mo for 1 or 2 shows i like that produce 10-15 episodes, or, 2-3 good movies annually.

The winner in this category is a company who can consolidate options into a simpler way to shop and buy. And that probably wont be a content provider. They used be called the cable company.

I’m ok with a la carte, just wish it could be done with less than 20 separate buying decisions.

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Good points on stickiness and moat. Think it’s in the too hard to call pile for me.

BULL case on PARA?

Big Ted Weschler and Chris Bloomstran position

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Ended up topping up on Goog instead.

Anyone looking at Netflix at these valuations? Seems OK quantitatively, moat?

I don’t see a moat except that they are big, and that affords them good talent and scripts. Then again the others are bulking up or already have size (Disney, WB/Disc, Paramount) so it’s a diminishing moat if it is one at all.

For the moment it seems the comers are those with another ancillary or primary business like Disney (ABC, ESPN, theatrical) or Paramount (CBS, theatrical), Apple (devices), Amazon (added value for Prime) or even WB/Disc (cable, theatrical); Netflix stands alone with streaming. Maybe that’s a good thing, but I see a lot of churn ahead as the other services achieve scale.

I know we’ll bounce around, although Netflix has a pole position thanks to its history, we’ve also added and sometimes subtracted) Apple, Discovery, and a couple smaller ones depending on current offerings.

The irony for me is that I bristle at paying a large cable bill a significant fraction of which goes to sports (we never watch) and Murdoch (ditto), and crap channels so we’re losing the “buying this big bundle with lots of things you don’t want” in favor of “buy these smaller bundles with lots of things you don’t want.”

It doesn’t seem like a victory, at least as a consumer. As an investor? No idea. Too hard.

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Exactly Goog has better visibility, stability, ROIC, ROE and PE.