Netflix stock plummets 37% as CEO says company plans ad-supported tier

Enlarge / Netflix CEO Reed Hastings at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, on October 18, 2021. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Netflix plans to launch a lower-priced subscription tier with ads, CEO Reed Hastings said Tuesday in an interview to discuss first-quarter earnings. Netflix revenue growth is slowing amid a loss in subscribers, and the company's stock price was down about 37 percent Wednesday as of this writing.

Hastings said that an ad-supported tier is something "we're trying to figure out over the next year or two" and that Netflix is "quite open to offering even lower prices with advertising as a consumer choice."

"Those who follow Netflix know I've been against the complexity of advertising and a big fan of the simplicity of subscription," Hastings said. "But as much as I'm a fan of that, I'm a bigger fan of consumer choice, and allowing consumers who would like to have a lower price and are advertising-tolerant get what they want makes a lot of sense."