ESS Tech

GWH

Paper is an educational technology company that partners with school systems to offer unlimited, on-demand access to academic support including tutoring, writing review and coaching, college and career support, AI-powered fluency practice, and gamified vocabulary and math practice. Paper had more than three million users across the United States at the height of the pandemic. The company is headquartered in Montreal, Quebec and has operations across North America with a second headquarters in Las Vegas, NV. Paper claims to offer one-on-one virtual tutoring, but in fact tutors often work with multiple students at the same time without informing the students or school districts which they serve.Paper considers their 250 full-time corporate employees, and 2000 part-time tutors to be remote workers rather than coming into an office on a full time basis. In recent months, due to reduced pandemic funding being provided to school districts, Paper's revenue and bookings significantly lagged expectations. This resulted in multiple rounds of layoffs in 2023 which saw a reduction of 273 corporate staff. In April 2023, Paper reduced its corporate workforce by 81. Deeper cuts followed in August and September 2023. Those rounds saw respective dismissals of 105 and 87 corporate employees. Hundreds of tutors have been cut from its workforce throughout 2022 and 2023 as well.

ESS Tech has been a target of short sellers for a while. The current short interest of 7.60% is significantly above the average of the last 12 months (3.69%).