XEROX said on Wednesday (Jan 3) that it was cutting 15 per cent of its workforce as part of a restructuring, the company’s latest effort to shift focus to its business-services offerings and away from its iconic photocopiers.

In a news release, the company said it would reduce its global staff, which included roughly 23,000 employees in 2022, and name a new leadership team. The layoffs are expected to take place in the first quarter of 2024.

The company’s shares fell more than 12 per cent after the layoff news was announced. Its share price had been steadily rising over the past year, in part because Xerox had saved billions of US dollars after starting a cost-cutting programme in 2018. It reported a roughly 6 per cent drop in revenue in the third quarter of 2023 compared with the previous year.

In recent years, Xerox has struggled to adjust to the digital age as demand for ink and print documents crumbled.

Under the leadership of Ursula Burns, Xerox’s former CEO, the company sought to beef up its business services by helping clients streamline the flow of documents in human resources and health care and handling payment systems. In 2010 it acquired Affiliated Computer Services, which runs the computer payment services for E-ZPass highway tolls, for US$6.4 billion.

But Xerox sold off its information technology outsourcing business for more than US$1 billion in 2014, and competition from China in the production of cartridge-clone makers hurt its profits. The company also sought to make inroads in 3D printing, but it sold off that business unit, too, in August 2023.

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In 2018, the company announced that it was merging with Japanese conglomerate Fujifilm. That merger was called off less than three months later after activist shareholders, most prominently Carl Icahn, protested the move as undervaluing Xerox. In 2019, Xerox sought to acquire HP, but that deal was also called off after HP rejected it, citing concerns over Xerox’s financial health. NYTIMES