Zoom Shares Sink 15% After ‘Concerning’ Earnings Miss, Analysts Downgrade The Stock
ForbesDec 23, 2022
The Facts
As demand for its services slowed due to the waning pandemic, Zoom Video Communications Inc. announced Tuesday, that it will be laying off about 1.3K employees, or roughly 15% of its staff, and incur about $50M to $68M in charges.
In a note to staff, Zoom's 2011 founder and CEO Eric Yuan said he would cut his own pay by 98% and forego his 2023 bonus, adding that while tripling its size in two years to meet pandemic demand, the company didn't focus enough on whether that growth was sustainable.
The Spin
Narrative A
These mass layoffs are undoubtedly real, but so is the strong economy. This is because most layoffs are occurring in the tech industry, particularly for software engineers, recruiters, and product, marketing, and operations managers. However, this doesn't mean those jobs are obsolete, but that major corporations simply overhired during the pandemic and are now correcting course. Other sectors are open for business right now and tech workers will soon catch up as their industry is expected to boom in the coming decade.
Narrative B
This is not just a tech sector or white-collar problem, as temp workers, particularly in manufacturing, have seen a recent wave of 110K workers being laid off. Though unemployment seems to be holding steady, the mixture of white and blue-collar job losses, coupled with impending stagflation as the Fed retains its high-interest rates, could amount to a very real, albeit unique, recession.
Metaculus Prediction
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