Uber on Monday confirmed that it would cut 3,000 more jobs while closing dozens of offices and scaling back money-losing bets to slow steep revenue losses incurred because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The announcement by CEO Dara Khosrowshahi follows a Business Insider report over the weekend by Julie Bort that more layoffs were imminent. Coupled with earlier cuts in May, the total of laid-off employees now stands at 6,700, or roughly 25% of the previously 28,600-strong global workforce.
In an email to staff first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Khosrowshahi said the uptick in Uber Eats orders amid shelter-in-place rules throughout much of the world isn’t enough to make up for the heavy losses in the rides business.
“Given the dramatic impact of the pandemic, and the unpredictable nature of any eventual recovery, we are concentrating our efforts on our core mobility and delivery platforms and resizing our company to match the realities of our business,” Khosrowshahi said in a statement.
“That’s led us to some painful decisions today: we are stopping some of our non-core investments and reducing the size of our workforce by around 3,000 people, each of whom I want to personally thank for their contributions to Uber. As I said to our teams today, we are making these hard choices now so that we can move forward and begin to build again with confidence.”
In total, the restructuring and layoffs should save Uber more than $1 billion compared to its previous plans at the end of 2019, it said in a regulatory filing Monday.
Uber’s stock price was up more than 8% over Friday’s close following the weekend report and subsequent confirmation as investors cheered the further cost reductions. Shares have begun to see a modest recovery in recent weeks following the company’s first-quarter earnings report, in which executives said rides — once down more than 80% — were seeing a slow rebound.
As part of a larger restructuring effort, Uber said it was exploring “strategic alternative” to its planned gig-work platform known as Uber Works. Uber Eats will henceforth be known as “delivery,” headed by the same executive, and Uber Transit will fold into a “mobility” division.
Uber has been exploring the possibility of acquiring GrubHub, a Chicago-based delivery competitor, according to multiple media outlets. The move could help bolster Uber’s delivery efforts, and by some measures even give it a healthy market-share majority in some key US cities.
A Journal reporter shared most of Khosrowshahi’s email to staff on Twitter.
—Preetika Rana (@Preetika_Rana)
Are you affected by the Uber layoffs? Get in touch with this reporter at grapier@businessinsider.com or via secure methods available here.