Twitter Said to Plan Job Cuts, Slimming Down to Go It Alone

(Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc., having failed to sell itself, is planning to fire about 8 percent of its workforce as the struggling social-media company prepares to go it alone for the time being.

Twitter may eliminate about 300 people, the same percentage it did last year when co-founder Jack Dorsey took over as chief executive officer, according to people familiar with the matter. Planning for the cuts is still fluid and the number could change, they added. The people asked not to be identified talking about private company plans.

An announcement about the job reductions may come before Twitter releases third-quarter earnings on Thursday, one of the people said. A Twitter representative declined to comment.

Twitter, which is unprofitable, is trying to control spending as sales growth slows. The company recently hired bankers to explore a sale, but the companies that had expressed interest in bidding -- Salesforce.com Inc., The Walt Disney Co. and Alphabet Inc. -- later backed out from the process.

The job cuts suggest Twitter isn’t in a position to beat analysts’ estimates for results in the third quarter or its outlook for the fourth, Loop Capital analyst Blake Harper wrote in a note to clients. He rates the stock hold.

Twitter shares fell as much as 4.9 percent Tuesday. They were down 4.2 percent to $17.28 at 11:16 a.m. in New York.

Twitter’s losses and 40 percent fall in its share price the past 12 months have made it more difficult for the company to pay its engineers with stock. That has made it harder for Twitter to compete for talent with giant rivals like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. Reducing employee numbers would relieve some of this pressure.

--With assistance from Beth Mellor To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Frier in San Francisco at sfrier1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz, Tony Robinson