Netflix lays off 300 employees in cost-cutting drive

(Reuters) – Netflix Inc said it laid off 300 employees, or about 4% of its workforce, in the second round of job cuts aimed at lowering costs after the streaming giant lost subscribers for the first time in more than a decade.

The move mostly affected its U.S. workforce and came after the company cut 150 jobs last month.

“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.

The world’s dominant streaming service has come under pressure in recent months as inflation, the war in Ukraine and fierce competition weigh on subscriber growth. After the subscriber drop in the first quarter, Netflix has forecast even deeper losses for the current period.

To arrest that downtrend, the company plans to introduce a cheaper, ad-supported subscription tier for which it is in talks with several companies.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)