Starry to slash another 100 jobs

Beleaguered fixed wireless access (FWA) firm Starry Internet will cut another 100 jobs from its payroll. In an SEC filing, the company said that the layoffs will result in a 24% reduction in its workforce and be effective on January 23.

Starry will incur about $800,000 in one-time cash charges from the layoffs but it expects the job cuts will result in $12 million in savings over the next 12 months.

But there’s more bad news from the company. Earlier this week Starry notified the SEC that an agreement it signed last August with Cantor Fitzgerald to raise as much as $100 million for the company had been terminated.

Last March Starry became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after completing a merger with special purpose acquisition company FirstMark Horizon Acquisition. The deal was valued at $1.66 billion. 

But the company soon ran into troubles because it was burning through cash quickly in order to build its network. In October Starry laid off half of its workforce, or 508 employees, and ceased its expansion into new markets. At the time CEO Chet Kanojia said that the company was curtailing its cash burn while it “explores strategic options.”

So far Starry has failed to come up with a solution to its troubles and in mid-December the NYSE warned the company that it was going to delist Starry’s Class A common stock because the average closing price of Starry shares had fallen below $1 each over a consecutive 30-day trading period.