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Pitney Bowes is yet again seeing a change at the top.
Seven months after CEO Marc Lautenbach stepped down from his role, his interim replacement Jason Dies is following suit.
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Lance Rosenzweig, who was appointed to the Pitney board earlier this month at the company’s annual shareholders meeting, will serve as the new interim CEO of Pitney Bowes in Dies’ place.
A new process is being started to appoint a permanent CEO, with the board retaining a search firm to support this process.
Dies’ departure also coincides with additional cost cuts at the shipping and mailing company. While Pitney Bowes had already announced expense reductions of approximately $85 million, the company has identified another $60 million to $100 million across the organization that could be cut per year.
The cost savings are separate from those related the company’s Global Ecommerce (GEC) business-to-consumer logistics services unit. Pitney Bowes is accelerating its review of the segment due to years of losses.
Hestia Capital, the shareholder that first wanted to replace Lautenbach and shake up the board in early 2023, had long beat the drum that the company rethink its GEC-centric strategy or identify a strategic alternative for the segment.
Ancora Holdings, another hedge fund that sought to overhaul Pitney’s board last year and install a new CEO, said last year it wanted the mailing firm to sell the GEC business. The current board said in a statement it is increasing its involvement in the review so it can be completed in the near term.
In the first quarter, the Global Ecommerce unit saw revenue declines of 2 percent to $333 million, along with widening adjusted EBITDA losses of $21 million. The lower Global Ecommerce revenue was driven by a 49 percent decline in cross-border revenue from changes in how two large clients access the company’s services.
For the wider Pitney Bowes business, revenue was flat at $830.5 million, while net losses totaled $2.9 billion. Last year, the firm recorded an annual loss of $385.6 million and an 8 percent decline in revenues.
The struggles at Pitney Bowes, and its GEC segment, come amid a weak freight and parcel market that has forced couriers like UPS, FedEx and the USPS to implement massive cost-cutting plans.
“The market is clearly at overcapacity,” Dies said during the company’s earnings call on May 2. “You heard that from multiple of our competitors. You heard it from the USPS as they talked about their volumes. That’s creating tremendous pressure on rate per piece. I think the USPS had a number that said there’s about a 12 million parcels a day of overcapacity across the entire country. And until that begins to normalize a little bit, I think you’re going to continue to see pressure on that rate per piece.”