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Doesn't that explanation makes very little sense in this context? We're talking about a company that just spun out on its own and has an enormous amount of work ahead of it and presumably a window of time where the investors expect things to be bumpy financially—why would a CEO intentionally try to reduce headcount in that situation? A year in when things have settled down, sure, but right after the split?

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I should note that we've had a huge amount of redundancies on top of people leaving for other opportunities. My guess is they want a very low-cost business that looks good in terms of its balance sheet so when it goes to IPO everything looks to investors.

Or they might have whatever indicators, real or imagined, saying that they should be shedding costs as much as possible.

I've even seen once spinning off a new company as a way to avoid the word "layoff" or "firing" for cultural reasons. Every few years the company would spin out a new one, moving all the parts they wanted to keep, then liquidate the old.

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