Paramount layoffs: 800 employees to lose jobs

Paramount Global (NASDAQ: PARA) opened in the red this morning after announcing plans of lowering its headcount by about 3.0%.

How many employees will lose jobs?

The mass media company will lay off around 800 employees in total. Bob Bakish – the chief executive of Paramount Global said in a note today:

The news arrives only a day after he confirmed that Super Bowl viewership hit an all-time high on CBS.

$PARA is scheduled to report its financial results for the fourth quarter in the final week of February. Consensus is for it to lose 5 cents a share versus 8 cents of earnings per share a year ago.

Paramount layoffs to help lower costs

The Nasdaq-listed firm had first signalled impending job cuts last month citing the need to turn leaner and “spend less”.  

Its flagship streaming service – Paramount+ lost $238 million in the latest reported quarter even though it added 2.7 million new subscribers to blow past a total of 65 million worldwide.

Note that Paramount layoffs are not the only one to hit the U.S. economy year-to-date. Others including Microsoft, Snap, and Okta have lowered their headcounts in recent weeks as well. In fact, artificial intelligence is expected to cut 170 million jobs in 2024 as Invezz reported here.

$PARA is now down more than 10% versus the start of February.