Question about a new 401k payout schedule.

I have recently started at a new company and was working to sign up for their 401k retirement program. Everything looked straight forward until in the mail yesterday, I received an update to their program, migrating from a pay period match distribution to an annual match distribution. This seems very counter-intuitive to me, as the goal of a 401k is to take advantage of yearly market growth in a pretax state, with employer matching. This strategy seems more like the company is going to take the market gains in their pocket and then payout my percent match equivalent, while keeping the profit. This would not allow for dollar cost averaging from the employer contribution as the market fluctuates, which makes what should be a low risk investment strategy more vulnerable to loss and more difficult to recover.

In addition to that, the annual payout is the end of the year, which from what I have read, tends to correlate with a bounce in the stock market, causing this contribution to buy into the program at a higher cost, lowering long term gains.

I am by no means an investment expert, but at face value, this seems like less of an employee focused strategy and more of a way for the corporation to take some investment gains.

Am I far off in thinking this?