Tesla Inc. TSLA-Q managers have been asked whether each of their employees’ positions were critical, stoking layoff fears in the company, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.
Tesla sent out a single-line query for each job after cancelling some employees’ biannual performance reviews, some of the people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
The electric automaker did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. It had 140,473 employees globally as of Dec. 31 last year.
Tesla shares rose 2.7 per cent in premarket trading. They have slumped more than 25 per cent so far this year.
The report comes after chief executive officer Elon Musk warned sales growth would slow this year despite price cuts that have already hurt margins at the world’s most valuable automaker and fuelled investor concerns about soft demand and Chinese competition.
Despite a renewed discounting push led by Tesla, new energy vehicle sales in top auto market China recorded its first month-on-month drop in January on slowing demand.
The U.S. automaker also lost its spot as the top EV maker by sales to China’s BYD in the fourth quarter.