Yahoo! Slashes Workforce, Cuts 2,000 Jobs

NEW YORK (TheStreet) - As Yahoo! (YHOO) attempts to turn itself around, it's going to do so as a much smaller company.

The embattled Internet giant announced plans to cut 2,000 employees early on Wednesday, as tries to reshape itself for the future.

Yahoo! announced layoffs early on Wednesday.

CEO Scott Thompson said in a press release that the firm is trying to become more nimble, profitable and faster.

"We are intensifying our efforts on our core businesses and redeploying resources to our most urgent priorities," he said. "Our goal is to get back to our core purpose - putting our users and advertisers first - and we are moving aggressively to achieve that goal."

Yahoo! said it expects to take a pretax cash charge of $125 million to $145 million in its second-quarter, but will save $375 million every year after the layoffs are done.

Speculation about layoffs at Yahoo! has been bandied about for weeks, and finally the cuts are here. Eric Jackson, co-founder of Ironfire Capital tweeted that he expects an additional 3,000 job cuts by the end of May, as Yahoo! tries to bring its cost structure in line with revenue. Jackson is long shares of Yahoo!.

Yahoo!, which has come under sustained attack from activist investor Daniel Loeb, is going to hold its first-quarter earnings results on April 17.

Shares of Yahoo! are down slightly in Wednesday trading, off 0.2% to $15.15.

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--Written by Chris Ciaccia in New York

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