About 1,000 Devon Energy employees will lose their jobs in the next few days, with 700 at the company’s headquarters in Oklahoma City learning their fate by Thursday. Field workers will be notified by February 22.
"These workforce and non-personnel related cost reductions are expected to decrease [general and administrative] costs by approximately $400 million to $500 million on an annual basis, exclusive of reorganization charges, and are designed to maintain capacity to respond appropriately to increased activity levels when the commodity price environment improves," the company said in a statement.
Devon also announced Tuesday about 600 employees, mostly in field offices, will also be affected by asset sales. Most of those people will move to the acquiring companies.
Two top-level executives plan to retire in July. Executive vice president of marketing Darryl Smette, and executive vice president of Human Resources Frank Rudolph are both stepping down. Smette has spent 30 years with Devon, and Rudolph has been with the company since 2007.
The company also released its quarterly earnings report Tuesday after the close of stock market trading, The Journal Record’s Sarah Terry-Cobo reports:
The company reported mixed results for the fourth quarter, including a 16-percent increase in oil production compared to the same quarter in 2014. The company reported core earnings of $319 million for the quarter, down nearly 7 percent from the fourth quarter 2014 earnings of $343 million. Devon beat Wall Street analysts’ estimates on earnings per common share by 6 cents, reporting 77 cents per common share, down more than 8 percent from the previous quarter at 84 cents per common share. Devon reported a net loss of $4.5 billion for the fourth quarter, down substantially from a net loss of $408 million in the same period of 2014. The company reported a net loss of $11.12 cents per diluted share for the fourth quarter, down from a loss of $1.01 per diluted share in the same period in 2014.
Devon stock closed down 2 percent Tuesday, at $21.26 per share. It’s the latest Oklahoma City-based company to announce layoffs resulting from the precipitous fall of energy prices that started in late 2014. SandRidge Energy has laid off more than 400 employees in 2016, and last year Chesapeake Energy also cut more than 700 jobs late last year.
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