Fitbit Announces Preliminary Fourth Quarter 2016 Results (Jan 30, 2017)
These are preliminary results from Fitbit, designed to flag to investors that revenues in Q4 were well down on previous forecasts, and to announce layoffs and other cuts to the business designed to realign costs with lower revenues. The company will lay off 6% of its workforce as part of an attempt to cut $200m (or almost a fifth) out of its operating cost run rate for the year. Bizarrely, it’s still characterizing its current troubles as temporary, even though it’s given very little evidence to back up this claim. Importantly, revenue in the first half of 2017 is likely to be down compared to H1 2016, because it had big new product launches a year ago. So even if we’re to believe the claims of a rebound, Fitbit concedes there won’t be any evidence of it until later this year. Fitbit continues to be by far the most successful standalone wearables company out there, but if even it is struggling in this way at this point, that’s indicative of broader challenges for the wearables industry.
via Fitbit
The company, topic, and narrative tags below will take you to other posts with the same tags. The narrative link(s) will also take you to the narrative essay which provides additional context behind the post.
Vote for or share this post
Use the Like button below to vote for this post as one of the most important of the week. The posts voted most important are more likely to be included in the News Roundup podcast episode I do each week. Or use the sharing buttons to share a link to this post to social networks or other services.