Online brokerage firm Robinhood will lay off 7% of its staff in its third round of layoffs in 14 months, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Approximately 150 full-time employees are being laid off to “adjust to volumes and to better align team structures,” Chief Financial Officer Jason Warnick said in a memo seen by the Journal.
The firm had around 2,300 full-time employees as of the end of 2022, its annual report showed. It had started the year with about 1,000 more than that, but eliminated those jobs in its April and August layoffs.
"We’re ensuring operational excellence in how we work together on an ongoing basis,” a Robinhood spokesperson told Banking Dive. “In some cases, this may mean teams make changes based on volume, workload, org design, and more."
The cuts affected employees in customer experience and platform shared services roles, as well as those in customer trust and safety; and safety and productivity, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The cuts encompass some recently hired employees as well as some who have been there for three or more years, according to social media posts of laid off employees seen by Banking Dive.
Those posts come from former employees on various teams, including social media and customer support.
The most recent round of layoffs occur less than a week after Robinhood’s $95 million acquisition of card start-up X1, a deal it made as it seeks to expand its product offerings and deepen ties with existing customers.
Earlier this year, Robinhood launched Robinhood Wallet, a smartphone app in which users could swap and transfer cryptocurrency. It was then rolled out to 1 million waitlisted users, following a soft-launch in September when the wallet was rolled out to 10,000 waitlisted users.
At Robinhood’s peak in 2021, the platform had 21.3 million active users and revenue of $565 million.
As of May, it had under 11 million active users, and transaction-based revenue was more than halved from the same time in 2021. Robinhood’s share price, however, is up to $9.83 from the start of the year, where it started at $8.08.
