we are operating a vulnerable business with so many ways to die: credit risk, technology, culture, efficiency, profitability, and capital--which is really the main culprit of the recent upheaval. Several month ago, management made the decision to lay off 28% employees because of their wrong assessment of the industry in last year--they were over-reliant on literally a couple institutional investors while expanded business as well as workforce crazily at the expense of worsening credit and overpaying for an acquisition which they dumped almost entirely in this massive lay-off.
Admittedly the business is now in a much better shape because the company is sleeker and it's investing heavily in diversifying funding sources, but other issues remain. Engineers are in a toxic environment where they can only resort to glassdoor for expressing grievance (CEO's response is "people have different perspectives blabla"). There's no real CTO and cronyism is pervasive. On the business side, former COO with deep banking experience had left to join a competitor, and people had been following suit.
A fair perception of this company should be mildly positive. Capital team is energetic and able to deliver good news. Risk team has very capable leaders and excellent analysts. Fundamentals of the portfolio are sound and investors' interest has warmed up. It's reasonable to expect the business to last longer than some people think here, but again, this business is so fragile that the margin of error is small. It also needs to treat its employees better to stop the workforce attrition
