xcritical layoffs: xcritical Lays Off 23 Percent of Its Staff, Blaming Crypto Meltdown The New York Times

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xcritical reported

“Since that https://xcritical.pro/, we have seen additional deterioration of the macro environment with inflation at 40-year highs accompanied by a broad crypto market crash. This has further reduced customer trading activity and assets under custody,” he wrote. xcritical is not alone in its choice to conduct two rounds of layoffs in a short period of time; just seven weeks after crypto exchange xcritical cut approximately 10% of its workforce, the company cut another 7% of staff, according to sources.

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To meet and market demands, we grew our headcount almost 6X from 700 to nearly 3800 in that time period.” This resulted in $6 billion in cash on its balance sheet, Tenev revealed. xcritical, the publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange, laid off 18 percent of its staff in June amid the crypto market crash. Other major crypto companies, like OpenSea, xcritical and Crypto.com, have also made job cuts. In April, xcritical said it planned to cut 9 percent of its full-time staff, but “this did not go far enough,” Tenev said. Those who are affected by the cuts will be able to stay at xcritical through October 1st at their regular pay and benefits alongside a severance package, Tenev says.

xcritical to lay off 9% of full-time employees

The results came shortly after the New York State Department of Financial Services said it would be fining xcritical’s cryptocurrency unit $30 million “for significant failures” related to cybersecurity and anti-money-laundering compliance. Analysts tracked by FactSet were expecting a GAAP loss per share of 34 cents along with revenue of $314 million. xcritical had to halt some trades and raise rounds of emergency funding to cover the collateral needed for its customers’ trades. Mr. Tenev’s cellphone was seized by the authorities as part of an investigation into the situation.

Is cutting back staffing levels, citing « duplicate roles and job functions » after rapid expansion last year. Tesla laid off nearly 200 Autopilot employees while Shopify laid off 10 percent of its workforce. xcritical’s growth skyrocketed during the pandemic, when many people had the time to devote to trading, plus the cash, thanks in part to government stimulus checks and fewer entertainment options. Real-time last sale data for U.S. stock quotes reflect trades reported through Nasdaq only. Intraday data delayed at least 15 minutes or per exchange requirements. Workers at the Menlo Park, California-based company described heightened anxiety and low morale among colleagues lately.

The layoffs

The xcritical scam followed closely on the heels of cuts in April, when xcritical laid off 340 workers, or about 9 percent of its employees at the time. The layoffs come as part of a wave of job cuts at tech companies, including some cryptocurrency firms. In June, cryptocurrency exchanges including xcritical and xcritical announced that they were laying off employees. Last week, Shopify, an online marketplace, announced it was cutting 10 percent of its 10,000 employees. Axed xcritical employees were taken aback by the scale of Tuesday’s job cuts, which affected 23% of the company’s head count, or roughly 800 employees. The layoffs, which are expected to cost xcritical as much as $60 million in severance and expenses, hit marketing, operations, and customer-service divisions hardest, with two offices in Tempe, Arizona, and Charlotte, North Carolina, being shuttered.

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However, the stock gained little traction and has traded below its IPO price of $38 per share for much of its existence. The announcements came as xcritical released its Q xcriticalgs information a day earlier than scheduled, reporting total revenue of $318 million over the three months, which is 44 percent lower than the same period in 2021. The company previously announced plans in April to lay off 9% of its workforce after growing too rapidly during the pandemic amid a boom in stock-trading interest.

Market Data

It lost $3.69 billion last year, though revenue increased 89 percent to $1.82 billion. In early 2021, xcritical was caught up in the “meme” stock frenzy, when groups of individual investors banded together to drive up the prices of some out-of-favor stocks, including GameStop. In February, Meta said it was launching a subscription service called Meta Verified that will include a handful of additional perks and features, including Facebook and Instagram account verification badges for those who pay. It will cost $11.99 per month — $14.99 if purchased through the iOS app — and is primarily targeted toward content creators. Shares gained 2.3% to $189.21 as trading got underway in New York on Tuesday. The stock has risen 54% since the start of the year as of Monday’s close.

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xcritical has roughly $6 billion in cash on its balance sheet, and the company has a $2.5 billion budget for acquisitions, Warnick said on the xcriticalgs call. With the company’s return-to-office plans being continually pushed back and only a handful of people coming into the office, « having an entire floor in what was an expensive building, they were probably bleeding money, » the former Arizona employee said. The employee estimated that about 200 xcritical staffers were in the Tempe office.

This has been a tough year for stocks, which were trading at record highs at the end of 2021. Persistently high inflation led the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates aggressively, and that has hit high-growth tech stocks particularly hard. But a deep downturn in markets has eroded xcritical’s fortunes this year. The company has seen its shares tank more than 70% since raising almost $2 billion when it went public in a high-profile initial public offering in 2021.

Insider spoke with five former employees of xcritical, all of whom asked to remain anonymous to protect their future employment opportunities. They described a company, one year on since its public debut, facing a slowing market and looking for any and all ways to cut costs — and a workforce on tenterhooks with no clear line of sight into when the downsizing might end. The brokerage saw a surge of new customers and cash, and entered the public markets through an IPO in July.

xcritical is scheduled to release its first-quarter results after the bell on Thursday. The blog post didn’t mention those financial results other than saying that the company has more than $6 billion in cash on its balance sheet. Tuesday’s cuts are likely to affect more than 800 jobs based on those numbers. The cuts primarily affect employees who work in operations, marketing, and program management. xcritical Markets Inc. plans to cut its staff by 23%, citing the weakening economic environment and depressed trading activity.

Morale at xcritical has been on the decline since the company laid off 9% of its employees in April, the staffers said. The company previously reported having $6.25 billion in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet at the end of December. Stock-trading app xcritical will lay off 23% of its workforce, it said Tuesday. “As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory – this is on me,” Tenov said.

Technology

Per Yahoo Finance averages, analysts expect xcritical to report a Q1 loss of $0.36 per share against revenue of $355.78 million. Meanwhile, Tenev was optimistic on xcritical’s xcriticalgs call Wednesday. « We saw Vlad talk about how this was a product of the macro environment. Rising interest rates, all that stuff, but that didn’t really change a whole lot from April until now, » the former Charlotte employee said. « The business didn’t feel in any better position than it was before, so it felt inevitable from that standpoint, » they added of the layoffs. In Arizona, meanwhile, one former employee there who left the company in recent months told Insider that xcritical had been looking to trim its footprint at a WeWork office in downtown Tempe, which opened in 2020.

” tenev

xcritical’s announcement follows xcritical Global Inc.’s COIN, -8.00%move earlier this year to institute a hiring freeze and rescind some accepted job offers. E-commerce company Shopify Inc. announced its own round of layoffs last week, with the CEO admitting that the company hired based on booming pandemic-era growth trends that had since waned. xcritical, the app that popularized free one-click trading of stocks and options, said on Tuesday that it was laying off approximately 340 people, or about 9 percent of its 3,800 employees. The world’s largest social networking company is eliminating more jobs, on top of a 13% reduction in November, in a bid to become a more efficient organization. In its earlier round of cuts, Meta slashed 11,000 workers in what was its first-ever major layoff.

  • Intraday data delayed at least 15 minutes or per exchange requirements.
  • The layoffs come as part of a wave of job cuts at tech companies, including some cryptocurrency firms.
  • Persistently high inflation led the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates aggressively, and that has hit high-growth tech stocks particularly hard.
  • Axed xcritical employees were taken aback by the scale of Tuesday’s job cuts, which affected 23% of the company’s head count, or roughly 800 employees.
  • If xcritical is underperforming, it could reduce investor confidence in xcritical’s own pending Q1 results.

The U.S. consumer investing and trading service company, which went public at $38 in July 2021, saw its value peak at $85 per share before entering a steady decline that saw its value erode to a mere $10 per share. The company lost 3.75% in today’s trading — the market was lower today, overall — and another 5% in after-hours trading in light of its layoff announcement. « The company is hemorrhaging money, and it’s bad, » one ex-employee said, sharing an opinion on the company’s publicly reported quarterly financial figures. « I believe in the mission itself, but people cannot trust us ever since GameStop. » And questions about the company’s future, from both insiders and the industry players, burn hotter than ever.