Yahoo said it will lay off 2,000 people, or 15% of its workforce, in its deepest round of job cuts in years as new CEO Scott Thompson tries to drive innovation within a leaner, more agile company while saving hundreds of millions of dollars.

Wall Street was again dubious the move would drive growth, which flagged under two previous CEOs who failed to find an answer to the likes of Google and Facebook, even as Thompson said he was intensifying the company’s focus on its core businesses.

“Today’s actions are an important next step toward a bold, new Yahoo — smaller, nimbler, more profitable and better equipped to innovate as fast as our customers and our industry require,” Thompson said on Wednesday.

“Our goal is to get back to our core purpose — putting our users and advertisers first — and we are moving aggressively to achieve that goal,” said Thompson, who took the helm of the company in January.

Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo, which ended 2011 with some 14,000 employees, said it would save $375 million US annually from the cuts, and will incur a pretax cash charge in the second quarter of $125 million to $145 million.

The company declined to comment on severance details.

Some analysts were skeptical about the layoffs, which had been widely expected.

“You can’t cut your way to revenue growth,” said Colin Gillis of BGC Partners. “What people want to see out of Yahoo is they want to see a plan and provision for revenue growth.”

But at Macquarie Research, Ben Schachter saw the layoffs as a start in determining the new direction of the company.

“Scott Thompson is not there to tweak the business,” Schachter said. “He saw something in the assets to make him think there was potential.”

Yahoo said it would provide more details of its plans when first-quarter results are released on April 17.

The layoffs follow Yahoo’s declining revenue due to competition from Web rivals Google and Facebook. Last year, Yahoo’s revenue totalled $4.98 billion, compared with Facebook’s $3.71 billion. Facebook has some 3,200 employees, compared with Yahoo’s 14,000.

(Reporting by Sarah McBride in San Francisco; Editing by John Wallace and Maureen Bavdek)