Verizon Offloading Hundreds of Stores, Second Recent Cut

Can you hear it now? That’s the sound of hundreds more stores exiting the Verizon retail portfolio.

Verizon is moving to sell 274 retail locations owned by the cellular provider, Reuters reported. The store count reduction will include the layoff of roughly 3,000 workers, according to the Wall Street Journal, including 500 corporate employees.

The divestments will hand hundreds of stores over to franchise owners, reducing operational costs and spending tied directly to real estate. The company will still own roughly 1,000 stores, which is considered a minimum count for Verizon over the next three years, according to an internal memo.

The company, helmed by Dan Schulman, last month revealed plans for simpler plans, fewer activation and upgrade fees and a loyalty program with discounts and perks.

It’s in a competitive market that includes juggernauts T-Mobile and AT&T, as well as the looming specter that Elon Musk’s Starlink could be more active.

But it’s another challenging moment for Verizon, which in the fall divested from approximately 200 retail locations. Around the same time, it made its biggest workforce reduction in company history, slashing roughly 13,000 from the payroll; as of the end of last year, the company counted nearly 90,000 full-time employees.

As of the first quarter, Verizon remains the largest wireless provider in the country, edging out T-Mobile by a few million subscribers.

Despite the retail machinations, Verizon is less than a year removed from signing a major office lease. Last July, the telecom giant signed a lease for nearly 200,000 square feet at the 1.8 million-square-foot building known as Penn 2. The move brings roughly 1,000 corporate employees to the tower, which was about 50 percent leased before the deal.

— Holden Walter-Warner