Just a few months after announcing a 107 percent year-over-year increase in sales and $20 million in revenue for 2014, Pflugerville, Texas-based TrackingPoint appears to be on the verge of shutting down. "Due to financial difficulty TrackingPoint will no longer be accepting orders," reads the banner atop the company’s homepage. "Thank you to our customers and loyal followers for sharing in our vision."
TrackingPoint makes "precision guided firearms"—rifles and carbines fitted with complex computerized scopes that can hit targets at more than a thousand yards out, even when fired by inexperienced shooters. Ars has covered the company’s technology several times since 2013, most recently looking at its "Mile Maker" 1,800-yard prototype weapon at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show. The company has gone through a number of personnel changes since our coverage began, including a major reshuffling of employees last year.
Sources familiar with the matter tell Ars that TrackingPoint has laid off more than 60 employees in 2015. Guns.com says its own sources claim the company laid off "more than 20 people" just this week, which when coupled with other cuts, would reduce the company’s headcount to about a dozen people (down from a bit under 100 at the beginning of the year). The Truth About Guns reports via an anonymous tipster claiming to be a former employee that as of Monday morning, CEO Frank Bruno was allegedly fired by owner John McHale (Bruno was brought on as CEO after the February layoffs and restructuring). The expectation from a number of different sites is that TrackingPoint will soon be filing for bankruptcy.
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