It's been a humbling year for Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX). The world's leading premium streaming service has suffered through back-to-back quarters of missing its own subscriber targets. The shares are trading 11% higher in 2019, but that's less than half the market average.
Investors haven't felt the same about Netflix since Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) unveiled and then launched their shiny new premium streaming services. Disney+ and Apple TV+ hit the market at low enough price points that you can sign up for both and still pay less than you would for a month of Netflix, and the former industry darling might be kicking itself for raising prices for the fourth time in five years earlier this month.
A price cut at this point would rattle investor confidence, but Netflix could have a clever way out of this springtime's significant hike that may be triggering an uptick in churn. Mobile and consumer electronics blog BGR is reporting that Netflix is testing discounted plans in India for customers willing to pay for more than a month at a time, a strategy that Disney and Apple used to hit the ground running with a steady base of long-term subscribers ahead of last month's launch. Netflix is taking a page out of its competitors' playbook, and hopefully this isn't the last time it borrows from the models of its smaller-yet-hungrier rivals.