Popular trading app Robinhood said Tuesday it was cutting 780 employees, or about 23 percent of its full-time staff, amid a drop in transactions and continued losses.
Robinhood said its transaction-based revenue — money it makes when customers trade stocks, options or cryptocurrencies — fell from a year earlier, when many retail investors piled into “meme stocks” and asset values were high. The company’s transaction revenue more than halved to $202 million in the quarter ended June 30, compared with $451 million a year earlier.
Robinhood shares have lost about 50% of their value so far this year; fell 2.3% after markets closed Tuesday at $9.92.
The cuts mark the second round of layoffs this year for Robinhood, which previously shed 9% of its workforce as its business faces a slumping stock and a “crypto winter“which decimated the value of many cryptocurrencies.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev blamed “inflation at 40-year highs accompanied by a broad cryptocurrency market crash” for the company’s financial woes.
“This has further reduced client trading activity and assets under custody,” he wrote on Tuesday.
Tenev said the company’s employees will be affected by the layoffs, but that the cuts will focus on Robinhood’s operations, marketing and program management groups.
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