Latch Lays Off More Than Half of Its Staff

Latch is looking to change its luck, and has plans to cut more than half of its staff in the effort.

The smart-lock startup announced plans to reduce its workforce by 59 percent by November. Incoming CEO Jamie Siminoff said the move is slated to save the company, which has employees in the United States and Taiwan, millions of dollars. 

The company announced the cuts only a week after its acquisition of Honest Day’s Work, a technology platform for residential service providers founded by Ring CEO Siminoff.

The layoffs are another blow to Latch, the Tishman Speyer-backed startup that has been enduring a brutal year.

Co-founder Luke Schoenfelder resigned in January from both the chief executive role and as chairman of the company’s board. Jason Keyes has been acting as CEO on an interim basis.

The struggling startup has also been dealing with reporting inaccuracies in its financial statements. The company first disclosed concerns regarding the reliability of its results from 2021 and early 2022. Two weeks after Schoenfelder’s resignation, the company disclosed its accounting inaccuracies also affected its 2019 and 2020 results.

An investigation by the company board found errors in how Latch recognized revenue, including how management failed to assess if sales were collectible and how employees failed to disclose “relevant terms” negotiated with customers. At the time, the company said it would file amended financial statements “as soon as reasonably practicable.”

The company received an additional notice of non-compliance from Nasdaq in May. Latch said it intends to regain compliance by early August, but the company’s securities could be subject to delisting from the platform if it fails to do so by Aug. 4.

Read more

Latch was founded in 2014 as a startup that boasted products allowing multifamily tenants to use an app to access their homes. The company later pivoted to the office market.

The company went public in 2021 by merging into TS Innovation Acquisitions Corp, a special purpose acquisition company founded by Tishman Speyer’s Rob Speyer. Latch said it raised $453 million in the initial public offering and was valued at $1.5 billion, but the stock has plummeted since then, closing at $1.32 on Monday.