Roku plans to eliminate 200 jobs, or approximately 5% of the workforce, becoming the latest tech company to lay off workers.
The plan is meant to “slow down the Company’s 2023 operating expense growth rate due to current economic conditions.”
Roku had 3,000 employees in 13 countries last year.
The layoffs, which will start in the fourth quarter of this year and be completed largely by the end of the first quarter of 2023, are expected to incur severance costs of between $28 million and $31 million from Roku.
“Taking these actions now will allow us to focus our investments on key strategic priorities to drive future growth and enhance our leadership position,” Roku said in a short statement.
In what most executives say is turning into a difficult macroeconomic environment, Roku is the latest company with a sizable advertising business to make cuts. Particularly heavily impacted is the advertising industry, according to Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who said earlier this week that the current state of the ad market is worse than it was during the the coronavirus pandemic.
The layoffs occur two weeks after Roku gave investors a warning that it anticipates fourth-quarter revenue to fall by 7.5% from the prior year, or to about $800 million.
“As we enter the holiday season, we expect the macro environment to further pressure consumer discretionary spend and degrade advertising budgets, especially in the TV scatter market,” the company said in the earnings letter to shareholders. “We expect these conditions to be temporary, but it is difficult to predict when they will stabilize or rebound.”