Amazon is ending its Flex gig economy delivery services in Germany, though the eCommerce giant has not given any reason for the closure, Bloomberg reported Tuesday (June 7).
Flex began in the U.S. in 2015 and expanded to Germany in 2017. The service pays drivers to ferry packages in their own vehicles from Amazon warehouses to customers’ homes.
A spokesperson said the company regularly looks at its programs and had “made the difficult decision” to discontinue Flex in Germany.
“We are actively supporting former Amazon Flex delivery partners to find other opportunities across the hundreds of roles and opportunities across Amazon’s operations in Germany,” the spokesperson said.
The report said Amazon has offered some Flex drivers a one-time payment equivalent to four weeks’ pay. Bloomberg noted that Amazon is building a newer, more formal delivery network that uses small startups beholden to Amazon, called Delivery Service Partners, or DSPs.
Some of the Flex drivers will reportedly be encouraged to join the DSPs, and the report said the network can absorb the “very small portion” of deliveries made by Flex.
PYMNTS wrote that Amazon stock was up 5% on Monday (June 6) which was the first day of the 20-for-1 split the eCommerce giant announced in March. However, the shares were still trading around 25% less than they had been at the beginning of 2022.
Read more: Amazon Stock Split Triggers Ramifications
Mark Lehmann, CEO of JMP Group, said stock splits are “usually a sign of optimism” and not many companies split their stock if they think things will go poorly.
The report said stock splits have no effect on the share’s value — though traders are excited for them to become more common among the biggest names in business.
Amazon was called a “company in some transition” in the report, as it had plans to go in several different directions last month, including its Alexa ecosystem and the defensive healthcare system.
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