Amid the worsening tech layoffs, American streaming company Roku announced its second round of job cuts on Wednesday. The move will impact around 200 employees, or 6% of its workforce, Roku said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The restructuring is aimed to lower the company’s on-year operating expenses growth and prioritize projects that it believes will have a higher return on investment. The company will incur non-recurring charges of approximately $30 to $35 million. These will primarily consist of severance payments, notice pay, employee benefits contributions, and more.
Furthermore, Roku expects that the majority of the restructuring charges will be incurred in the first quarter of fiscal 2023. Additionally, the company says the implementation of the headcount reductions, including cash payments, will be complete by the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2023.
Founded in 2002 and headquartered in San Jose, California, Roku is a company that produces streaming devices and smart TVs that allow users to access streaming content from a variety of online services, including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and many others. Roku devices are small, affordable streaming devices that connect to a TV via an HDMI cable and offer access to a wide range of streaming content.
With this, Roku has joined several tech companies, especially in the U.S., that have reduced their employee count. In the past, several companies including Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta, Sundar Pichai-led Alphabet, Elon Musk-led Twitter, and Satya Nadella-led Microsoft, among others, have laid off thousands of employees in an attempt to gear up for a global economic slowdown. Walt Disney, Microsoft-owned GitHub, and electric carmaker Lucid are some prominent names that announced job cuts just at the start of this week.
