(Yicai Global) Dec. 9 -- Chinese short video platform Kuaishou Technology is laying off staff, The Paper said yesterday, citing insiders. The report of redundancies at the rival of Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, comes a week after Yicai Global reported that iQiyi was also downsizing its workforce.

Beijing-based Kuaishou is finalizing the transformation of its commercialization teams in the capital as well as in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen by the end of the year, an employee told The Paper. Some business lines will be ended, while the rest will be relocated to Hangzhou, the person noted.

“Those who are not willing to relocate are free to leave,” the staffer said, adding that most employees are cautious about discussing the matter because they have not yet negotiated severance deals.

Kuaishou is not the first big Chinese internet firm to be said to axe its headcount. Video site operator iQiyi is also letting go staff, some 20 percent to 40 percent, Yicai Global reported on Dec. 1, citing an employee. The Beijing-based firm has not fully agreed on a severance package, but it is likely to offer ‘N + 1,’ where ‘N’ represents a month’s salary for each year worked, the person said.

Kuaishou’s layoffs are a part of a year-end optimization that mostly targets staff who missed key performance criteria, another person working at Kuaishou told The Paper. According to different sources, the redundancy rate is 10 percent to 15 percent, or even as high as 30 percent.

Non-technical executives aged over 35 with annual salaries of about CNY1 million (USD158,000) are also targeted, someone claiming to work at Kuaishou said earlier on jobs platform Maimai. But the director of Kuaishou’s marketing team said no such notice had been received.

Kuaishou, which has not officially responded to The Paper’s report, had 16,387 employees as of June 30, according to its listing prospectus.

The company’s third-quarter net loss shrank 75 percent to CNY7.1 billion (USD1.1 billion) from a year earlier, with an adjusted net loss of CNY4.8 billion, per its latest earnings report. Revenue rose 33 percent to CNY20.5 billion (USD3.2 billion), beating an expectation for CNY20.1 billion.

Kuaishou’s shares [HKG: 1024] rose 1.8 percent today to close at HKD85.75 (USD11) each.

Editor: Futura Costaglione, Xiao Yi