There has been a lot of drama at digital freight broker in recent months.
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Under Clark, the company expanded its operations with acquisitions last year even as revenue plummeted.
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Last September, then Flexport Chief Executive Dave Clark, a former top executive at Amazon.com, announced he was resigning his role a year after joining the company to transform it into a full-service logistics provider.
Clark came to Flexport in September 2022 after a two-decade career building Amazon’s logistics network, initially joining the company’s founder, Ryan Petersen, as co-CEO before taking over as the sole leader in March.
With Clark’s departure, Petersen stepped back into the CEO role. Petersen also fired at least six executives brought on by Clark. (See More Interesting Details about the Drama around Dave Clark's Departure from Flexport.)
That was followed by layoffs of roughly 20% of its staff, or more than 500 workers.
Now, another 20% of its 2600 workers are being shown the door, according to The Information and the Wall Street Journal. The layoffs will be executed over the next few weeks.
Peterson has set a goal of turning a profit by the end of this year or early 2025.
Late last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that many of these changes follow a massive drop in freight rates to ship ocean containers in 2023, squeezing margins.
That move follows a $260 million investment in Flexport earlier this month from ecommerce firm Shopify in the form of a convertible note. Last year, Flexport bought Shopify’s logistics business.
It’s been a wild ride for Flexport and its investors. Its valuation soared to $8 billion in a February 2022, with fund raising that pulled in $935 million.
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Under Clark, the company expanded its operations with acquisitions last year even as revenue plummeted.
Then after Clark’s departure, in November Flexport acquired the technology of bankrupt digital freight broker Convoy for an undisclosed price, adding to the 10-year-old company’s US trucking operations.
Flexport may be buoyed by recent jumps in global shipping rates in the face of attacks on commercial ships entering or leaving the Red Sea and the Suez Canal from Yemen-based Houthi militants.
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