GoPro’s Woes Continue with Additional Layoffs

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by Graham SheldonMarch 17^th, 2017

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GoPro’s leadership team may have hoped to turn things around in 2017, but so far the news coming out of the camera manufacturer isn’t good at all. The company is cutting an additional 270 positions, on-top of 200 layoffs that occurred late last year. 

GoPro – Yet more job cuts in 2017

We originally reported on GoPro’s financial turmoil back in 2016, and their fortune just doesn’t seem to be improving after a year that saw the company lose a whopping $373 million dollars. They have struggled to innovate in an action-camera segment that has become increasingly crowded over the years. Furthermore, other missteps such as the Karma drone recall and missed earnings projections have clearly done very little to ease the fears of investors.

Many of the job cuts will be affecting the virtual reality and media teams of the company. They say these cuts will amount to a $200 million savings on operating expenses in 2017.

“We’re determined that GoPro’s financial performance match the strength of our products and brand. Importantly, expense reductions preserve our product roadmap and we are tracking to full-year non-GAAP profitability in 2017,” said CEO, Nicholas Woodman.

Image: GoPro Karma Drone.

Their stock rallied significantly on news of their cost-cutting measures.

On Thursday, GoPro CEO Nicholas Woodman appeared on CNBC and said the company didn’t capitalize on improving camera technology within smartphones.

“Where we fell out a little bit in our post-IPO years was that we failed to make GoPro contemporary and failed to align with the smartphone movement.” – Nicholas Woodman.

2017 will be a make or break year for GoPro, so it will be interesting to see what they have up their sleeves on the product side. Could we expect them to release a 4K smartphone in partnership with Microsoft in the near future?