Stamps.com Lays Off 240 Workers to Raise Efficiency

By ASHLEY DUNN

Oct. 24, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Online postage company Stamps.com said Monday it laid off about 240 of its more than 500 employees, confirming reports last week that it was reducing its work force to streamline operations.

The layoffs include full-time, part-time and contract employees in its main office in Santa Monica and other locations, including Bellevue, Wash.

In the past two weeks, Stamps.com also has lost a key group of top executives, including its chief executive, chief financial officer and comptroller. The 4-year-old company’s president and chief operating officer, Loren Smith, also stepped down from his positions to return to his role as a board member.

Stamps.com Chairman Marvin Runyon, who served as U.S. postmaster general from 1992 to 1998, said the cuts did not reflect financial trouble, but rather a desire to increase efficiency.

“Although we have nearly $300 million in cash reserves, today’s competitive environment demands that we operate our business at maximum efficiency,” Runyon said in a statement released Monday. “These moves will strengthen our ability to attain our profitability goals, while adding value to the company.”

Stamps.com lost $110 million over the past four quarters on sales of $6 million. In its most recent quarter ending June 30, the company lost $52 million on sales of $3.7 million.

The company expects to report its third-quarter earnings within the next 10 days.

Shares in Stamps.com rose 6 cents, to $2.78, in Nasdaq trading Monday. The company’s stock has taken a beating over the past year, dropping from a high of $98.50 last November to as low as $2.31 on Oct. 12.

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Ashley Dunn

Ashley Dunn is the former weekend editor at the Los Angeles Times. He previously served as assistant managing editor in charge of California news. Dunn joined The Times in 1986 as a suburban reporter in the San Gabriel Valley and later moved to the Metro section, where he participated in coverage of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the 1992 Los Angeles riots. After a stint at the New York Times, Dunn returned to Los Angeles in 1998 as a reporter and then editor in The Times’ Business section. He later was named to run science coverage. He worked as deputy national editor from 2007 to 2011 and played a central role in the coverage of some of the biggest national stories of recent years, including the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the 2008 election of President Obama. Prior to his career at The Times, Dunn worked at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, the Danbury News-Times in Connecticut and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Dunn is a California native who has worked as a dishwasher in Sacramento, a printer in San Francisco and a bicycle repairman in Walnut Creek. He has lived along the levees of the Sacramento Delta, the Powell-Hyde Street cable car line and the shaded streets of Pasadena. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley with a degree in English.

Stamps.com Lays Off 240 Workers to Raise Efficiency

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