N-able slashes jobs amid restructuring: 'This decision is never easy to make'

‘As part of the annual planning process, all roles and responsibilities were evaluated across the company and a focused action was taken to reduce, and in some cases, restructure certain positions,’ says John Pagliuca, N-able president and CEO.

N-able has cut or restructured about five per cent of its workforce earlier this month due to the "challenging macroeconomic environment" despite reporting strong financial results in its third quarter.

"Let me start by stressing that this kind of a decision is never an easy one to make for any company," John Pagliuca, N-able president and CEO, told CRN in an email.

"As part of the annual planning process, all roles and responsibilities were evaluated across the company and a focused action was taken to reduce, and in some cases, restructure certain positions. Our business remains healthy and therefore this may have felt a bit unexpected."

He added that the Burlington, Mass.-based software vendor, which currently has about 1,400 employees and is a spin-off of SolarWinds, felt that it must be proactive to best position the business and its teams for future growth so that it can successfully navigate through an incoming recession.

"The difficulty of this action wasn't one that was taken lightly," he said.

The layoffs took place across the company but were not focused on a particular discipline, business or location.

About five per cent of the workforce was reduced and restructured, which would have affected about 70 employees. But an N-able spokeswoman declined to disclose how many workers were laid off versus restructured.

The announcement was made immediately to impacted employees via one-on-one discussions. Pugliuca said that the company was doing its best "to support the impacted individuals based on their position, tenure with the company, location and other unique situations."

For its FY22 third quarter, N-able had a total revenue of $93.5m, which was about six per cent year over year growth, or about 13 per cent year over year growth on a constant currency basis. Subscription revenue was $91.2m, GAAP gross margin was 83.9 per cent and non-GAAP gross margin 84.8 per cent.

But despite the layoffs, the company is continuing to hire key positions.

"Since the spin-off [of SolarWinds] we have invested broadly across the business to operate as a standalone company and drive revenue growth," Pagliuca said. "N-able remains healthy and is still hiring for key positions that will help us to be in the best position to support our people, partners, and products as we move forward. We expect to continue to hire as planned."

N-able is the latest in a string of companies who have reduced their workforces due to an impending recession. Salesforce laid off hundreds of workers ahead the Thanksgiving holiday and Oracle laid off as many as 200 cloud employees in November.