Dexcom is laying off more than 500 employees at its San Diego location, while it looks to expand its manufacturing operations elsewhere after growing too big for its Southern California home.
First reported last week by The San Diego Union-Tribune, the diabetes sensor company said it plans to transition its headquarters into more of an innovation-focused center, after previously housing both commercial production and R&D.
Manufacturing will move to Dexcom’s established locations in Mesa, Arizona, with some of the affected employees being eligible for relocation assistance, according to the Union-Tribune.
The total headcount reduction of 535 employees beginning July 26, according to a California state WARN notice, amounts to about 15% of the company, with about 2,400 staff still remaining in San Diego.
Meanwhile, the vacated floor space is slated to be converted into new laboratories over the coming years, and Dexcom told the paper it plans to eventually hire as many as 400 new positions in the city.
“The buildings we have here on Sequence Drive, they were never (built to be) manufacturing facilities,” Barry Regan, Dexcom’s executive VP of global operations, told the Union-Tribune. “They were more office buildings that we kind of grew into as a startup, and we’ve outgrown them … it’s not suitable the buildings we’ve got for manufacturing, but it’s perfect for research and development.”
Dexcom’s sales of its G6 and G7 continuous glucose monitors have grown by leaps and bounds—with the company posting its first billion-dollar quarter in January, after celebrating its first billion-dollar year in 2019.
It’s a trajectory the company hopes to continue, by expanding the use of its wearable blood sugar sensors in people with Type 2 diabetes as well as among those interested in the data from a health and wellness perspective. In March, the company collected an FDA green light for its first over-the-counter tracker, the Stelo.
Elsewhere, Dexcom established its first European manufacturing site in January as it expands internationally, breaking ground in Ireland on a 300-million-euro site that’s expected to bring at least 1,000 jobs to County Galway.