Parrot lays off 100 employees after disappointing quarterly figures

French drone manufacturer Parrot has announced that it will lay off about 100 employees. This decision is related to the not too rosy results from the third quarter of this year. At the beginning of 2017, the company already laid off 290 employees.

Parrot is laying off about a hundred employees after turnover fell by 40 percent in the past third quarter, according to the quarterly figures. In the same period of last year, turnover still amounted to 39.2 million euros, but that fell to 23.4 million euros.

This decrease is partly attributable to a 45 percent decrease in revenue from the component responsible for consumer drones. The turnover of this division was 22.6 million euros in the third quarter of 2017, but that now came to 12.5 million euros. Parrot did achieve revenue of 9.3 million from the sale of commercial drones, a decrease of 4 percent. The loss amounted to almost 52 million euros, a deterioration of 221 percent compared to the same quarter in 2017, when a loss was already made.

Parrot still had 658 employees at the end of September, after the company laid off 290 employees in early 2017. In a statement to the quarterly results, it says that the company is continuing its plan to focus much more on industrial and commercial drones. The 320 employees of this unit will therefore be retained; In principle, this also applies to the 291 employees who make consumer drones. The layoffs are related to ‘international operations’ and relate, among other things, to marketing activities.

The French manufacturer is having a hard time in the drone market, where market leader DJI is the most important player with a share of 70 percent. In addition, Parrot reports that the consumer market is slowing down in terms of growth. The company calls this market ‘unstable’ and sees it as the main reason for having to lay off 100 employees.

Parrot released the Anafi in the summer, a compact, foldable, 320g consumer drone that can shoot videos in 4k resolution with high dynamic range and a speed of thirty frames per second. For this, the drone has a 21-megapixel camera that is mounted on a gimbal that can be tilted 180 degrees.

The Anafi