Flock Safety offers buyouts to all 1,500 staff, deadline 2 October
The licence plate camera company, valued at $8bn, has put a voluntary exit package in front of every employee as cities cancel contracts.
Flock Safety has offered a buyout to all 1,500 of its employees. Staff have until 2 October to decide.
The package includes healthcare and stock options, according to reporting on the offer. The company has described it as its most generous.
The sums have not been disclosed. The offer may run to tens of thousands of dollars per employee, on the account of the reporting.
Flock sells automatic licence plate reading cameras, largely to police forces and local government. It was last valued at $8bn.
That customer base is the problem. A growing number of cities and towns have cancelled or declined to renew contracts for the cameras.
Neither the number of cancellations nor the revenue attached to them has been made public. Flock has not said how many staff it expects to take the offer.
A voluntary buyout is the polite version of a headcount cut. It lets a company shrink without announcing redundancies, and it lets employees who can already see the direction of travel leave with something.
The structure matters for the people deciding. Healthcare continuation and stock options are worth more to long-tenured staff than to recent joiners, which tends to shape who walks.
For founders, the case is a plain one about customer concentration. Selling to public bodies looks like durable revenue until the politics turn, and then contracts end at council meetings rather than at renewal dates.
Public-sector buyers also cancel in public. Each decision is minuted, reported locally and read by the next council considering the same purchase.
Flock now has a deadline of its own. What the company looks like after 2 October depends on how many of its 1,500 staff decide the buyout is the better offer.
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