[By Kate Conger and Mike Isaac]
SAN FRANCISCO — Lyft said on Wednesday that it was embarking on a corporate restructuring that would result in job cuts, as the ride-hailing company grapples with questions about whether it can make money.
The layoffs will affect around 90 people in Lyft’s marketing and enterprise sales departments, the company said. In marketing, Lyft is shifting from city-by-city marketing groups to regional teams, while its enterprise sales group is shuffling which markets are its top priorities. The company has 5,500 employees.
“We’ve carefully evaluated the resources we need to achieve our 2020 business goals, and the restructuring of some of our teams reflects that,” said Alexandra LaManna, a Lyft spokeswoman. “We are still growing rapidly and plan to hire more than 1,000 new employees this year.”
Lyft is part of a group of once highflying tech start-ups that held disappointing initial public offerings last year and are now dealing with questions about whether they can turn a profit. It is the first time that Lyft is cutting jobs since it went public in March. Last year, Lyft’s chief rival, Uber, laid off more than 1,000 employees in several rounds of cuts.
Other tech start-ups that were fueled by private money and that grew rapidly have also retrenched recently. WeWork, the office rental company, scuttled its plans to go public last year and has since cut 2,400 jobs. In India, Oyo, a highly valued hospitality company, has started laying off more than 2,000 workers.
Lyft has faced investor doubts for months. After the company went public, its stock tumbled below its offering price on the second day of trading and has yet to recover. The shares are down more than 30 percent from the offering price.
Logan Green, Lyft’s chief executive, said during a call with investors in October that the company was making progress on its plans to become profitable. If it excluded some costs, the ride-hailing service would be profitable by late 2021, a year ahead of schedule, he said.
