Yahoo confirmed that the company is laying off about 2,000 employees as part of a broader effort to reduce costs and create a smaller, more streamlined organization. The embattled Web portal said it expects to realize about $375 million in annual savings from the move and will take most of a pre-tax charge of $125 million to $145 million related to severance costs in its second quarter.
The blog AllThingsD, which first reported the expected layoff Tuesday, April 3, suggested it could be the start of wider employee cutbacks. It also indicated that the immediate cuts would fall hardest on the company’s product division, led by Blake Irving. Yahoo did not provide further details on those points in its statement Tuesday, which broadly discussed the benefits of the latest restructuring effort.
Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson called the move “an important next step toward a bold, new Yahoo — smaller, nimbler, more profitable and better equipped to innovate as fast as our customers and our industry require. … Our goal is to get back to our core purpose — putting our users and advertisers first,” he stated.
Thompson, who was named chief executive in January, previously indicated that significant changes were ahead for Yahoo, but did not provide details of a turnaround plan. In Tuesday’s statement, he said the company has identified “a select group of core businesses” within Yahoo that it will focus on without specifying those areas.
He also reiterated his intent to capitalize on the company’s wealth of data from its 700 million users to deliver more personalized content and better ROI for advertisers. AllThingsD has reported that Thompson, who has hired the Boston Consulting Group, could lay out plans for a company-wide reorganization next week.
