DocuSign to Cut 6% of Its Workforce as Sale Talks Stall
(Bloomberg) -- DocuSign Inc. is cutting about 6% of its workforce as part of a restructuring effort after talks to sell itself appear to have stalled.
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The move will mostly affect staff in sales and marketing, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. DocuSign had 7,336 employees at the end of 2023. As a result of the layoffs, the company will incur about $28 million to $32 million in restructuring charges. The stock slipped 7.4% in premarket trading in New York.
San Francisco-based DocuSign was a pandemic darling, but has been hurt by increasing competition from Adobe Inc.’s document business, and its valuation suffered as investors lost their taste for unprofitable software stocks.
The company had been in talks with Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman about acquiring it, but those discussions seem to have fallen through. DocuSign hasn’t been able to agree on a deal price with either of the private equity firms, which were competing to buy DocuSign, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Several Wall Street banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. have held talks to provide as much as $8 billion in financing for a buyout of DocuSign, Bloomberg has reported.
The restructuring plan is designed to strengthen DocuSign’s financial and operational efficiency as it continues to grow as an independent public company, it said in the statement. DocuSign said it expects to meet or exceed its fourth quarter and fiscal 2024 guidance.
The news from the online signature services company adds to what’s become nearly daily job cut announcements by technology companies. So far this year, some 32,000 tech workers have lost their jobs, according to Layoffs.fyi, a startup that has been tracking job cuts in the industry since the pandemic.
Snap Inc. announced on Monday that it’s reducing its workforce by about 10%, or around 540 employees. Earlier this month, software company Okta Inc. said it would eliminate 7% of its staff to reduce costs, affecting about 400 employees. The list goes on, including Big Tech employers like Amazon.com Inc., Salesforce Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.
(Updates with shares and detail on plans to remain independent)
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