I heard that June is the next window for layoffs. Anyone have any more information?
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The company is too big for the amount of revenue it brings in. Factor in the heavy debt load and its a bigger problem. Then add COVID and the potential for empty campuses in the Fall and its a full blown crisis. Cuts will be deep and may include another office closure or two.
Regarding the ‘simple math’ comment. How much do you figure the 5-month salary cut, renegotiated leases, travel cuts and 1-yr. 401 match cut will save? Is that factored in?
I think this will be the largest scale layoffs to date. Pre-COVID, Cengage could forecast revenues declining in the 5-7% range yearly. Nothing they could do about that.
The merger would have saved us. It failed.
Now we are looking at a 20%revenue decline for our largest ordering period and probably the same for January, considering that January of this year was pre-COVID. $300mm in revenue has pretty much vanished.
Its simple math. The layoffs will be 300-400 people at least.
Cengage lays off salespeople virtually every year and summer is prime time for such reorganization in the field.
Besides, Cengage is notorious for NOT paying legitimately-earned bonuses. That has been a prime source of savings over recent years.
"Managers, etc." would not generally know of planned layoffs in advance. Indeed, theirs are among the heads potentially being cut. But even if they did have forewarning, they wouldn't share the information with you. It's every rat for itself aboard the good ship Cengage these days . . .
Best course of action is to presumptively get your resume together (this week), quietly update your LinkedIn and other profiles, sock as much cash as you can into savings, connect and/or renew your relationships with former co-workers who have already left Cengage in the hopes that they might be eventually able to help you land a new position wherever they themselves landed. Keep your head down, do your work, take a little (or a lot) paid time for yourself during these summer months, and wait to see if the axe swings in your direction or not.
It's been that way for a decade or so within Cengage and this is even more the case now, with revenues in freefall and no hope of a merger to serve as a corporate stopgap. Be one of the smart rats and hoard your cheese, for the iceberg approaches . . .
They moved the investor call out for a reason. I'm thinking its a broad restructuring that will probably include layoffs. They can't go back to normal after the merger failed.
June layoffs that will hit the salesforce? Do you think this is accurate information? I haven't heard anything about this from managers, etc, however I'm not surprised if this is the case. Have us sell all year, close business, and now when things slow down for a bit, fire your sales team to help save money and also not have to pay bonuses... which who knows if they're going to pay in Oct anyway :(
If that's true then I would expect an announcement before the 6/18 earnings call. That's something they'll want to share in order to get juice from the investors.