GoPro’s announcement that it plans to cut 23% of its workforce this week didn’t come as a complete shock to anyone who’s been following the wearable camera maker over the past few years.
Once a leader in the action camera market, the company has seen its stock fall from highs of more than $93 in 2014 to just 80 cents today. The $10 billion valuation it once boasted is a distant memory. (GoPro’s current market cap is just under $122 million.) Now it’s betting on an ongoing turnaround plan to stabilize the business.
Part of that plan involves becoming an even leaner operation. GoPro will lay off 145 of its 631 employees starting in the second fiscal quarter. That will result in charges of between $11.5 million and $15 million. Prior to this week’s cuts, the company said it had reduced its costs by 26% from the previous year.
That hasn’t been enough to restore profitability. While the company had targeted a return to the black by the end of 2025, it instead posted a $9.1 million loss in the fourth quarter.
A long history of troubles
GoPro faces plenty of challenges today. Tariffs have slowed its turnaround, rising memory costs are eating into margins, and supply issues have weighed on the bottom line. But many of its problems predate those pressures.
At the height of the company’s popularity in 2014 and 2015, founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman pushed to expand beyond cameras, launching both a media division and a drone unit meant to compete with DJI. The move drove a surge in head count, which peaked at 1,600 employees, and in R&D spending, which shot as high as $358.9 million in 2016, more than double what it had been just two years earlier.
Neither bet paid off. The media division shut down in 2016, and the drone was pulled from the market after experiencing battery failures mid-flight.
