Speaker Maker Sonos Cuts 6% of Workers Ahead of Public Offering

(Bloomberg) -- Sonos Inc., the maker of wireless speakers, cut about 6 percent of its workers ahead of an anticipated initial public offering that could take place as soon as June.

The company will eliminate 96 staff from its global workforce of 1,500 people, the Santa Barbara, California-based company said Thursday. The cuts occurred across several departments and were designed to boost profitability. Sonos has offices on the U.S., China, Europe and Australia.

Sonos has filed confidentially for an IPO this summer and is targeting a market value of $2.5 billion to $3 billion, people familiar with the matter said in April. The speaker maker is announcing a new voice-controlled device for living rooms in June and recently launched the Sonos One, an Amazon Alexa-controlled smart speaker that competes with the Echo, Google Home, and Apple Inc.’s HomePod.

“Like any healthy business, we occasionally make adjustments to the size and structure of our teams to stay nimble and align resources with market opportunities,” it said in a statement. “Sonos is growing and profitable.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Gurman in San Francisco at mgurman1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Robert Fenner, Reed Stevenson

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