alt Hacker NewsAtlassian has 16,000 employees worldwide and reported a net loss of $257 million last year. In fact it has not had a single profitable year since its IPO in 2015. And as expected its stock price is in the dumpster, down to $75 from its peak of $440 in 2021 (-83%).
So, like a lot of the tech industry this is simply a case of overhiring, overspending and general mismanagement. And like every other layoff announcement “AI” is a convenient scapegoat to hide executive dysfunction.
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Profit is just one metric that affects the stock. YoY Revenue growth was historically in 40s and high 30% year on year. But last year was sub 20%. Investors are re-evaluation SaaS company multiples through a new lens of AI. Personally I wonder if Fortune 500 can renegotiate lower margin pricing with the "We could just build this with AI in house" BATNA argument.
Atlassian was famously bootstrapped and profitable since inception. They were one of the only profitable tech companies at a time when everyone else was busy making bigger and bigger losses.
If they have really been unprofitable for the last decade that is very sad.
Your assessment is spot-on! These entities have been on shaky ground for a while, and AI is a convenient scapegoat for justifying their unavoidable downsizing.
> In fact it has not had a single profitable year since its IPO in 2015.
What's frustrating is that the company was profitable from its second year, and a really good little money maker too. I was working there at the time and I was proud to be working at one of the few tech companies actually turning a profit. Then IPO came, then literally overnight we switched gears and "reinvested every dollar into growth" and decided we'd just be another dumb money losing tech company.
This is a pretty surface level analysis; Atlassian also has stock buybacks of billions of dollars each year. It's an intentional choice to not declare a profit and pay a dividend, and instead to reinvest in acquisitions and pay shareholders via stock buybacks.
You'll find it much more interesting to look at metrics like free cashflow, which is a better indicator as to whether the company is generating more cash during operations than it spends. This is a lot closer to the layman's idea of profit, and in a small business like a restaurant or single store it's often analogous to profit. In publicly traded companies, net profit and loss are borderline meaningless.