The Irish arm of DocuSign incurred costs of €1.35m from two rounds of job cuts at the company in February 2024 and February 2023.
That is according to new accounts which show that pre-tax losses at the Dublin registered DocuSign International EMEA Ltd increased almost three fold from €44.65m to €127.5m in the 12 months to the end of January 2023.
Revenues at the electronic signature software company – which has its global headquarters in San Francisco – decreased by 5% from €107m to €102.6m.
Numbers employed decreased by 72 from 914 to 842 as staff costs increased from €103.94m to €128.36m.
Losses surged at the firm in fiscal 2023 as its operating expenses increased by 50% from €152.69m to €229.1m.
The directors stated “that the loss for the financial year was primarily a result of the company changing from a cost-plus entity to a hybrid cost-plus/full risk distributor model”.
On February 1, 2023, the company signed a non-exclusive license agreement with Docusign Inc granting the company rights to sell Docusign Inc owned products.
The note states that while the company did not begin to sell products to third-party customers until 1 September 2022, in anticipation of selling products directly to customers, “the company invested heavily in sales, marketing and customer service in the earlier part of the financial year”.
The note states that furthermore, DocuSign International EMEA Ltd began to absorb the costs of other EMEA entities supporting sales, marketing, and customer service in EMEA at a markup.
They state that also contributing to the loss for the financial year was the share-based compensation expense of €31.19m.
They state that the non-cash amortisation of the Right to Use IP from Seal Software Ltd for FY23 amounting to €7.28m “also contributed to the noted loss”.
On post balance sheet events, the directors state that the company announced restructurings involving reductions in workforce in February 2023 and February 2024.
The total costs incurred by the company for severance pay, pay in lieu of notice, payroll taxes, professional fees and other employee benefits in these two rounds of restructuring amounted to €1.35m.
The company’s balance sheet was strengthened during the year with a capital injection of €109.2m while its share based payment reserve increased from €72m to €104.08m.
These increases offset by the post tax loss of €127.5m resulted in shareholder funds increasing from €34.2m to €47.1m.
Cash funds increased from €5.7m to €11.7m. The company’s staff costs were made up of €87.69m in wages, €31.19m in share based payments and €9.48m in payroll taxes.
Reporting by Gordon Deegan
