More like financial engineering. When Wall Street demands ever increasing EPS growth, but revenues are flat or declining and you don't have cash to buy back shares, cost cutting is the only option. Unfortunately, labor costs are the bulk of most companies' costs, so that means layoffs. It would be nice if companies had a financial horizon that extended beyond the current quarter but that seems more and more like a pipe dream.

Few of layoffs you see are due to AI (and none are AGI, as that doesn't exist atm). It's just a convenient excuse to justify the job cuts AND appear adopting new tech, a costs / stock market win-win when expecting economic stagnation to continue

It doesn't sound like it. The articles references competition from low-cost providers, for which I'm assuming, VZN cannot match. As well, converting corporate stores into private franchises would have nothing to do with AGI.