Brokerage app company Robinhood has laid off “approximately 9%” of its global staff, according to a blog post from the firm’s CEO Vlad Tenev.
In the post, Tenev cited a period of significant headcount growth that resulted in “some duplicate roles and job functions, and more layers and complexity than are optimal.”
“After carefully considering all these factors, we determined that making these reductions to Robinhood’s staff is the right decision to improve efficiency, increase our velocity, and ensure that we are responsive to the changing needs of our customers,” he wrote.
The move comes ahead of Robinhood’s Q1 2022 earnings release on Thursday. In January, when the firm reported its Q4 2021 earnings, Robinhood predicted a decline in total net revenues compared to 2021’s first quarter.
“For the first quarter of 2022, Robinhood anticipates that total net revenues will be less than $340 million, which assumes some incremental improvement in trading volumes versus what we have seen so far,” Robinhood said at the time. “At the top end, this implies a year-over-year revenue decline of 35% compared to the first quarter of 2021, during which we saw outsized revenue performance due to heightened trading activity, particularly relating to certain meme-stocks.”
Tenev said in Tuesday’s blog post that Robinhood still plans to “accelerate our product momentum through 2022 and will introduce key new products across Brokerage, Crypto, and Spending/Saving.”
Earlier this month, Robinhood announced its plan to acquire crypto startup Ziglu, and at the Bitcoin 2022 event in Miami announced the broader rollout of wallet services and a plan to support Lightning network payments.
Christine Brown, Robinhood Crypto’s chief operating officer for crypto, departed the brokerage app company in late March.
Source: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/143679/robinhood-announces-layoffs-ahead-of-first-quarter-earnings-release?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss