That's because there is at least 17% less share dilution than there was a day before, let alone the runway being marginally extended.
So speculators don't get dumped on by employees with RSUs all day every day, and the business prospects are not adversely impacted any more than they already were. Thats when you pay more for shares.
Layoffs are proactive for investors, not an omen for investors, don't get that confused.
The distribution of RSUs at all major tech companies is very uneven. Most job titles don't get any, or just a token amount. Only executives and software engineers can negotiate for the large grants.
I'd guess less than 10% of employees probably hold more than 90% of RSUs everywhere (not that different from the stock market as a whole, where 10% of Americans own over 80% of the market).
So a 17% layoff might not touch the RSU-rich employees very much at all.
If this is really a factor in the stock price, then that company is toast.
When an employee is hired, the assumption is that that employee's all-in hiring cost is less than the increase in value for all shareholders. That means if you pay an employee $250K a year, including stock, the shareholders better be getting more than $250K back in value.
By your reasoning, the shareholders are losing more by dilution than they gain back by enterprise value. If that's the case they should fire everyone and close their doors, since there's no RSU dilution at all with zero employees.
On the other hand, if employees were hired with the assumption that they were worth the price, then any layoffs should rationally reduce the stock value - because even though you get the RSUs back, the employees must have been worth more than those RSUs or it was a mistake to hire them in the first place.
Nice logic, the only reality is that wall street tolerated being dumped on by employees in the theoretically high growth tech sector.
no voting rights, no dividends, create shares, dump on investors
the limits of this tolerance was pushed and pushed in the macro environment of there being nothing else to invest in
if share price goes up, profitability "just a few quarters away", the employee value proposition or executive handcuffs are not factored in
for a long time the "share price" trend of tech companies has not been important because a steady share price means that it is amazing that wall street tolerates being dumped on and keeps placing large enough bids to absorb the constant sell pressure from an open spigot of unlimited authorized shares to create. even a moderate down trend is okay since the employees are dumping shares monthly instead of stuck a long for the ride for at least a year. rising share prices just being icing on the cake.
That still means the company is toast. You're basically arguing that companies were way overpaying for their employees, and their stock price was inflated to begin with. The stock should still go down in that case.
I'm not arguing that at all. I am recognizing the psychology in the macroeconomic environment and helping you understand why you are on the wrong side of the market today.
LYFT and many recently IPO'd tech companies have been doing monthly vesting, with no cliff. So basically with all their massive hiring, employees have already been dumping shares.
The conditions on the unvested portions typically are destroyed. With options are available to purchase for exercise. That's pretty exclusive to startup life, but the same concept in RSUs at big tech where only the vested portion is sellable and the rest is destroyed.
The other thing I would add is that new employees usually get some cash value for their level divided by the current stock price. Many laid off employees were hired when the stock price was higher. If they have to replace these employees with new ones in a timeframe before the stock price has recovered then they suffer more dilution.
