For those of us in North America, it's a matter of simple math. I'm assuming we all follow the same PDR schedule...
Mid February is earnings and close or P2 - make some announcement during the earnings call to make wall street wet - announce a dividend increase so we can maintain that dividend aristocrat title and also hint at progress so banks keep playing nice with us. Keep employees on for the beginning of the year/the big super bowl push where we make like 20% of our annual plan and so the corporation can claim the Tax benefits for keeping people employed. Then what happens after the earnings call?
Last two weeks of Feb and early March we all go through performance reviews for 2018. In order to make sure the higher ups and higher salaried folks can still keep getting their 5-10% raises, the head honchos decide to lay people off and "reinvest" that money into the business. I.e., let's lay off some L10, take his 100,000 salary and give 20 remaining employees a 3k raise. Oh, and that extra 40k? Let's pocket it for a rainy day and spend it on sh--ty acquisitions like SodaStream and Kevita in hopes of striking it big.
F---ing pathetic. Our leadership is flailing in the water searching for a rescue, and they keep on failing but aren't facing any consequences. I hope wall street crushes their stock this week. Oh boo hoo, now the senior exec's $4m net worth dropped to $3.5m. Give me a f---ing break.