Yahoo laying off 15 percent of employees after 4 4 billion loss

According to Yahoo, the size of the workforce next year would be about 42 percent smaller than it was in 2012, consisting of about 9,000 employees and less than 1,000 private contractors.

In the meantime, the company has recorded $1.27 billion in revenue for the last quarter of 2015, with profits of just $63 million.

The news is yet another sign that CEO Marissa Mayer is open to the sale of Yahoo’s Internet business, which consists of online search, websites and email.

The layoffs will result in savings of $400 million (£292m) annually, said Yahoo, as the company also prepares to close five offices around the world, including Dubai, Madrid, and Milan.

In its latest “re-invention” Yahoo is to cut 15 per cent of its workforce and is looking to shed “non strategic” assets, including online games and Smart TV.

Yahoo is also expected to announce wide-ranging job cuts, as Business Insider first reported.

While it puts the new plan in action, Yahoo will continue to explore spinning off its core Internet businesses as a separate company, something it said it was considering in December.

Ms Mayer, a former rising star at Google who helped that company eclipse Yahoo, defended her performance. The amount included a $1.2 billion hit for acquisitions made under Mayer, including a $230 million decrease in the value of blogging service Tumblr, which the company bought for $1.1 billion in 2013. In fact, several investors as well as analysts have been urging Yahoo to take this move so that the company can sell some of its core business. It reported revenues of $1.3bn (£900m; €1.2bn) and a loss of $4.4bn on account of a goodwill impairment.

During her tenure, the embattled Mayer has focused on growth in mobile, video, native advertising and social.

Said Yahoo chairman Maynard Webb: “The Board also believes that exploring additional strategic alternatives, in parallel to the execution of the management plan, is in the best interest of our shareholders”.

She said it makes sense for Yahoo to have a “more reasoned perspective” in terms of how quickly it can advance its plan.

At the peak of Yahoo’s growth in 2007, the company had 14,300 staffers on its rolls.

It said the changes announced Tuesday will return it to “modest and accelerating growth in 2017 and 2018”.

Once a leading internet company that brought the dot.com boom, Yahoo’s revenue has declined from $7bn in 2008 to less than $5bn as it lost market share to Google and Microsoft.