Photo Credit: Toa Heftiba
Sonos has disclosed a 7% reduction in its workforce in the latest layoff round to hit a tech company.
Sonos says it is also committing to further reducing its real estate footprint and re-evaluating its program spending. The layoffs and decisions regarding who is impacted are subject to local laws and consultation requirements. In a regulatory filing shared with Digital Music News this morning, Sonos says it is committed to right-sizing its cost basis while still investing in its product roadmap to help drive future growth.
Sonos further estimates that it will incur anywhere from $11 million to $14 million in restructuring costs and related charges. Around $9 million to $11 million of that will be related to employee severance and benefits. Most of these costs will be incurred during the third fiscal quarter, as revealed by the company’s SEC filing.
The 7% of workforce impacted translates to about 130 employees. “In the face of continued headwinds, we have had to make some hard choices, including eliminating some positions and re-evaluating program spend,” Sonos CEO Patrick Spence told employees. Sonos employed around 1,844 people in October 2022. It previously cut its headcount by 12% in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sonos successfully litigated a patent infringement suit against Google, winning $32.5 million in its smart speaker patent battle. That legal battle started in 2020 when Sonos accused Google of copying its technology after a partnership between the two companies was established in 2013. As a result of that case, Google was required to change how some features work on its own lineup of Nest smart speakers and displays.
“This is a narrow dispute about some very specific features that are not commonly used,” a Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels said in a statement about that verdict. “Of the six patents Sonos originally asserted, only one was found to be infringed, and the rest were dismissed as invalid or not infringed. We have always developed on the merit of our ideas. We are considering our next steps.”
