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A month after laying off 5,000 employees, T-Mobile is rewarding shareholders with billions

By Anam Hamid

Published: Sep 07, 2023, 5:04 PM

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T-Mobile

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T-Mobile has been getting a lot of hate from customers for unpopular changes to plans and payment methods. Employees are having to deal with disgruntled customers who are not happy about recent changes. 7 percent of the workforce or 5,000 employees were laid off last month because the carrier's obsession with adding new subscribers by offering cheaper plans meant it had to cut costs elsewhere.

But T-Mobile can be very generous when it wants. Ask the shareholders

T-Mobile has announced the first-ever dividend program for its shareholders. The company will pay dividends of $3.75 billion over the next five quarters. The company also intends to buy back $15.25 billion of its shares.

T-Mobile's shares rose $3.15 to $137.28 after the announcement.

CEO Mike Sievert told Yahoo Finance that the company is "outperforming this whole sector on growth." He says that investors should continue to expect industry-leading earnings growth and cash flow generation.

This is sure to leave a sour taste in the mouths of the 5,000 employees who were let go last month and another estimated 5,000 who were allegedly terminated in 2020.

So why are shareholders being rewarded while 5,000 employees had to lose their jobs?

Well, Sievert says that it's not like the company lays people off every year. He explains that after 3.5 years of its merger with Sprint and doing a "historic network build," there's a lot of duplication. He says that this decision was made to improve the company's efficiency and reclaim the speed, decisiveness, and characteristics that made it successful in the first place.

Those words sound logical, even if a little cold. But when you consider T-Mobile's promise of adding more jobs after its acquisition of Sprint, the words only sound hollow and insensitive. At that time, then-CEO John Legere said that the merger was all about creating new, high-quality, high-paying jobs. He stated that the company planned to add millions of new customers and that it would need a lot of people to provide support to new customers.

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Anam Hamid is a computer scientist turned tech journalist who has a keen interest in the tech world, with a particular focus on smartphones and tablets. She has previously written for Android Headlines and has also been a ghostwriter for several tech and car publications. Anam is not a tech hoarder and believes in using her gadgets for as long as possible. She is concerned about smartphone addiction and its impact on future generations, but she also appreciates the convenience that phones have brought into our lives. Anam is excited about technological advancements like folding screens and under-display sensors, and she often wonders about the future of technology. She values the overall experience of a device more than its individual specs and admires companies that deliver durable, high-quality products. In her free time, Anam enjoys reading, scrolling through Reddit and Instagram, and occasionally refreshing her programming skills through tutorials.