Customer and employee experience company Qualtrics International Inc. (Nasdaq: XM), which has dual headquarters in Seattle and Provo, Utah, is laying off about 270 workers, roughly 5% of its total headcount.
Qualtrics disclosed the layoffs Wednesday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, which said in a separate filing it had more than 5,600 total employees as of Sep. 30, expects to complete the majority of the layoffs in the first quarter.
"Being able to adapt to dynamic markets and changing customer needs will be more critical than ever in this coming year. How we focus through this is critical to achieving our goals," CEO Zig Serafin said in an email to employees. "We're now aligning resources to these highest priorities. This involves making difficult decisions, including creating some new roles, restructuring current roles and eliminating some roles that do not map to priority areas."
According to the SEC filing, Qualtrics will incur roughly $5.8 million in charges related to severance payments and other costs around the layoffs. Serafin said in his email that some impacted employees could have new roles at Qualtrics. He added that laid off employees will get at least 10 weeks of severance pay, health insurance and career resources, and eligible employees will get their performance bonus and stock vests through Feb. 10.
Qualtrics, founded in 2002, helps clients improve customer and employee experience by collecting and analyzing data. Its technology is designed to find pain points in user experience, for example a cumbersome step in downloading a new app. Qualtrics' clients include Verizon, Toyota and FedEx.
As of March, Qualtrics said it had about 900 employees in the Seattle area and occupied about about 175,000 square feet of space on seven floors at the 2+U tower downtown, in addition to six floors it was subleasing. Qualtrics opened its space in the 2+U tower in 2021.
SAP in November 2018 announced plans to acquire Qualtrics, just days before Qualtrics was set to go public. The $8 billion deal closed in January 2019, but Qualtrics spun out and went public on the Nasdaq in January 2021. The company generated $377.5 million during the third quarter, up 39% year over year.
"I’m deeply grateful to each person who has contributed to building Qualtrics. While this is an incredibly difficult moment, these are steps we need to take to support how we build the company going forward and to deliver results against our goals," Serafin said in the email to employees.
