Twilio Inc., a maker of customer communication and marketing software, said it will cut about 11% of jobs and restructure the company in a push for profitability after a period of rapid expansion.
(Bloomberg) — Twilio Inc., a maker of customer communication and marketing software, said it will cut about 11% of jobs and restructure the company in a push for profitability after a period of rapid expansion.
Sales strategy, research, and administrative staff will be most affected by the workforce reductions, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Lawson wrote in a letter to employees Wednesday. The shares rose 0.5% in New York.
“Twilio has grown at an astonishing rate over the past couple years. It was too fast,” Lawson wrote. “At our scale, being profitable will make us stronger.”
San Francisco-based Twilio, best known for its direct-to-consumer text messaging services, is betting on an expansion into the wider market for customer service tools in a bid to compete more forcefully with Salesforce Inc. and Adobe Inc. Recent acquisitions have included identity verifier Boku Identity Inc., toll-free messaging service Zipwhip and customer data provider Segment.
Its workforce has jumped over the past year, growing to 8,510 employees at the end of June from 6,334 employees a year earlier.
Twilio shares are down 73% this year, as the current stock market rout has particularly impacted unprofitable software companies. In August it projected about 31% sales growth to $970 million in the current quarter and a loss of as much as 43 cents a share, worse than analysts had expected. The company confirmed its forecasts in the filing.
The company sees about $70 million to $90 million in charges from the restructuring, most of which it will incur in the third quarter, according to the statement.
(Updates with background from first paragraph, adds shares in second paragraph)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
