Happy New Year: GoPro Dumps Hundreds of Workers

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 4:45AM EST · Published Jan 6, 8:20AM EST

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Happy New Year: GoPro Dumps Hundreds of Workers — © Thinkstock

GoPro Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GPRO) lack of direction under bumbling CEO Nick Woodman has cost hundreds of workers at the company their jobs. A report from tech news site TechCrunch puts the number at 200 to 300, mostly in the corporation’s drone division.

Nick Woodman was recently named one of 24/7 Wall St.’s 20 worst CEOs in America in 2017. His citation:

GoPro was initially a significant growth company that sold its helmet-mounted action cameras for extreme sporting enthusiasts. Founder and CEO Nick Woodman scraped together cash from family and from selling shell jewelry and belts out of a Volkswagen van to launch GoPro.

The rise of the company was quite impressive. Unfortunately, even considering the newer drone sales, GoPro more or less still feels like a one-hit wonder. Its stock vaulted higher after the IPO, moving to $93.70 in September 2014. Since sales tanked in 2016, however, GoPro shares have languished at less than $10. The stock’s faltering performance alone would spell out a call for outside help to run the company.

According to a CNBC story on Woodman in early 2017, GoPro ran into production problems, and new launches have failed to engage the public. The company missed out on capitalizing on the rise and dominance of smartphones.

In addition to running GoPro, Woodman has undertaken philanthropy and was a guest-host on “Shark Tank,” the entrepreneur reality funding show. There may be too much going on in Woodman’s life and he needs to focus more on GoPro.

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Sales of those drones may have become much less impressive recently. The company’s Karma drone had sold well, so presumably either sales have fallen of margins are poor. The drone did have a battery problem that caused GoPro to temporarily suspend sales. However, with a fix, it was back on the market early last year.

GoPro trades near its 52-week low, at $7.52 a share, against a range of $11.99 to $7.14. The stock is off 17% in the past year, while the Nasdaq has risen 30%.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.