Taiga Motors Lays Off 70 Workers, Cuts Production After Lackluster Winter

The warmest winter in decades scuppers yet more livelihoods in the snowmobile sector.

By: Janaki Jitchotvisut

Apr 7, 2024 at 11:00am ET

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Quebec-based electric snowmobile and watercraft manufacturer Taiga Motors just released its 2023 Q4 and full-year financial results, and though year-over-year revenues increased from the CAD $3.2 million recorded at the end of 2022 to CAD $16.1 million at the end of 2023, the company isn't looking all that great.

For those on the US side of the border, those figures convert to US $2,367,214 in 2022 and around US $12M in 2023. At the same time, inventory also increased over the past year, going from CAD $20.8 million at the end of 2022 to CAD $33.2 million at the end of 2023.

These and various other factors are some of the reasons why Taiga also announced that it's making two moves it stresses are temporary. One is pausing vehicle production, due in part to the unseasonably warm winter and its negative impacts on snowmobile sales. And the other is cutting 70 jobs from the workers who were previously responsible for making those Taiga Motors vehicles.

The company announced both its financial results and these two pieces of news in a statement published on its dedicated Investor Relations site. There, it also announced that "Taiga will not be hosting a conference call to discuss its fourth quarter and full year 2023 results."

Was this move made proactively in anticipation of a negative reaction to the job cuts? We can't say what was going through the minds of the folks who made any of these decisions, from the ones who chose to cut the jobs to the ones who chose not to hold a conference call where participants could ask questions in real-time instead of personally emailing the CFO's spam filter.

Interestingly, the official release also contains this paragraph toward the end:

"Furthermore, given the transition period in which Taiga currently finds itself as well as the Company's current overall operational, market and financial circumstances, the Company has decided that it does not currently intend to provide any forward-looking guidance, production or sales outlook in respect of the fiscal year ending December 31, 2024 nor for any subsequent period."

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While this is RideApart and not BusinessApart, I can tell you that I've personally read enough quarterly and annual financial reports over the years to note that it seems pretty unusual to have no forward-looking guidance included.

What does it all mean? There's no way to know for sure at this point, but we'll be sure to keep an eye on future developments from Taiga as they arise.