Smart Tech: Netflix below Wall Street Forecast
SMART TECH – On Thursday, the first-quarter forecast of Netflix Inc made a slight downward movement, missing the Wall Street view. Although it made a record quarter for new customers, Netflix’s shares declined 4% in after-hours trading.
There are expectations that investors set following the price hike announcement of Netflix for its US subscribers earlier this week. One of their usual expectations is a possible emergence of a sign that depicts a strong pace for demand.
“Results won’t push its stock higher from here, with most of the good news already priced in after a massive rally earlier this month,” said Haris Anwar, a senior analyst from Investing.com.
In late December, Netflix released its massively popular dystopian movie “Bird Box.” The success of this movie helped the company to gain 8.8 million new paid streaming customers in the fourth quarter.
However, investors factored the film’s success along with the price hike into their valuation. Consequently, this helped the company’s shares to increase by more than 50% since late December.
Further, the company outlined its future on global expansion. Netflix has also created original TV shows and movies. This is primarily to engage new and existing subscribers so that they will continuously pay monthly fees.
However, the streaming service company is currently facing competitions such as from Walt Disney Co. The TV established and Movie Company ended its supply of new movies to Netflix since it planned to create its own streaming service.
“The worry is that international bruisers like Disney and Amazon aren’t going to go down without a fight, and both have the financial clout to counterpunch pretty hard. The battle for viewers’ eyeballs is only just getting started,” said Lansdown Analyst George Salmon.
Smart Tech: Fossil sells smartwatch tech to Google for $40 million
On Thursday, Fossil Group Inc announced that it would sell the intellectual property of its smartwatch technology to Google. Further, Alphabet Inc will buy the smartwatch technology for $40 million. Consequently, this lifted the watchmaker’s shares to 11 percent.
The sale will allocate a portion for Fossil’s research and development team that is currently working on the technology’s shift to Google.
According to Fossil, the deal is likely to close in January.
“The addition of Fossil Group’s technology and team to Google demonstrates our commitment to the wearables industry,” said Stacey Burr, a vice president of product management at Google’s Wear OS, a smartwatch platform.
Recently, Fossil launched “Sport,” its new offering that goes along with Wear OS. Moreover, the watchmaker stated that smartwatches have been the company’s fastest-growing category.
“Together with Google, our innovation partner, we’ll continue to unlock growth in wearables,” said Fossil’s Chief Strategy and Digital Officer Greg McKelvey.
The shares of Fossil increased 8.3 percent at $18.87.
