- Shopify Inc (NYSE: SHOP) braces to slash 1,000 workers, or 10% of its global workforce, marking a retreat from its pandemic bet on e-commerce growth, the Wall Street Journal reports.
- Founder and CEO Tobi Lütke justified the layoffs citing the resumption of old shopping habits and pull back on the online orders that fueled the company’s recent growth.
- Shopify, which helps businesses set up e-commerce websites, saw a slowdown in FY22 revenue growth.
- Lütke said he had expected that surging e-commerce sales growth would last past the Covid-19 pandemic’s ebb. “It’s now clear that bet didn’t pay off,” he added.
- Shopify will cut jobs in all its divisions. However, most layoffs will occur in recruiting, support, and sales units.
- Shopify also looked to eliminate over-specialized and duplicate roles, and some groups were convenient but too far removed from building products.
- Shopify offered 16 weeks of severance to the laid-off workers, plus one week for every year of service.
- Shopify’s job cuts were among the largest in a wave of layoffs and hiring freezes by tech companies grappling with rising interest rates, supply-chain shortages, and the reversal of pandemic trends.
- Netflix, Inc (NASDAQ: NASDAQ:NFLX), Twitter, Inc (NYSE: NYSE:TWTR) Tesla, Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) embraced job cuts while other firms, including Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: NASDAQ:MSFT) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOG) Google opted for hiring ease down for the rest of the year.
- Price Action: SHOP shares traded lower by 12.3% at $32.20 in the premarket on the last check Tuesday.
Read at Benzinga