Verizon will cut about 15,000 jobs after new CEO says ‘cost reductions will be a way of life for us here’

Verizon, which has operating revenue of $101.81 billion so far this year, plans to cut about 15,000 jobs in the next week, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter. The wireless service and home internet provider looks to pare back costs as it grapples with increased competition, the people said.

This cut would be the largest ever for the carrier, and a majority of the reduction is likely to be made through layoffs, according to The Journal. The company had around 99,600 employees on a full-time equivalent basis by the end of 2024, according to a securities report filed in February.

The company also plans to shift about 200 stores to franchises, moving affected employees off of its payroll, the report said.

Verizon did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

The cost-cutting efforts come just a month after Daniel Schulman, who has been serving almost eight years as the company’s lead independent director, assumed the CEO role.

“Verizon is at a critical inflection point,” he said in late October during the company’s third-quarter earnings call. “The only way we can drive sustainable value for our shareholders is by significantly raising our game and winning responsibly in the market.”

In the third quarter, Verizon saw a decrease of about 7,000 mobile phone lines under postpaid contracts, or accounts where customers are billed monthly after using wireless services, as opposed to prepaid plans where customers pay in advance. Wall Street analysts had forecasted a gain of 19,000 postpaid contracts.

This was its third consecutive quarter losing postpaid phone subscribers.

Meanwhile, competitors AT&T and T-Mobile reported large increases in postpaid subscribers. Now, Schulman, former CEO of PayPal and Virgin Mobile USA, said he plans to reduce the company’s costs and find ways to reverse the customer losses.

“We have a tremendous amount of opportunity to be more efficient, to be scrappier,” Schulman said on the earnings call. “Cost reductions will be a way of life for us here.”

As CEO of PayPal for almost 10 years up until September 2023, Schulman helped the company transform into a global payments platform, more than tripling revenue from $8 billion to $30 billion and growing its earnings-per-share five-fold in the process, according to Verizon’s website. 

Schulman, the founding CEO of Virgin Mobile, also helped orchestrate its $483 million sale to Sprint Nextel in 2009.

But in an October note, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote that Schulman’s goals with Verizon would “not be easy or quick,” according to The Journal.

It’s “possible—if not probable—that Verizon can improve operating and financial performance over time while remaining a rational actor in the marketplace,” they wrote.