That’s because employees are seen as a liability, while holdings are seen as value.
Basically, employees need to be paid, so having a lot of employees hurts your company value. But owning immaterial things helps company value, because you don’t need to pay for ideas beyond the initial investment.
So headlines like these are common any time a company is looking to boost their stock. Lay off a bunch of employees to reduce cash out, use that freshly gained cash to buy intellectual properties (or buy the companies that own that IP) and then sit on the IP because actually using it would require employees like the ones you just laid off. You don’t care about actually leveraging the IP, because simply owning it is what gives you the value bump. You’re not worried about income from those IPs yet, because you’re just trying to make the company larger with the existing cash you have access to.
That’s because employees are seen as a liability, while holdings are seen as value.
Basically, employees need to be paid, so having a lot of employees hurts your company value. But owning immaterial things helps company value, because you don’t need to pay for ideas beyond the initial investment.
So headlines like these are common any time a company is looking to boost their stock. Lay off a bunch of employees to reduce cash out, use that freshly gained cash to buy intellectual properties (or buy the companies that own that IP) and then sit on the IP because actually using it would require employees like the ones you just laid off. You don’t care about actually leveraging the IP, because simply owning it is what gives you the value bump. You’re not worried about income from those IPs yet, because you’re just trying to make the company larger with the existing cash you have access to.