Crunch Watch: Philips announces 6,000 job cut
Philips is the latest casualty in ongoing global meltdown or their employees are, more specifically, as the European tech giant announced 6,000 redundancies today.
The cuts come after the Dutch company released figures of their first quarterly loss in six years seeing profits sink to €1.47 billion in the red. That sounds like the kind of sum that could end all things Royal Philips Electronics but then given that this time last year they made about the same amount of money in the other direction, you’d probably imagine that there are plenty of reserves to draw on, at least for now.
All the same, that seems like a hell of a lot of cash. How far can they have overstretched or was it how many people didn’t buy TVs this Christmas? For one, they’ve started to cease investment in LG and, to staunch the flow of cash, they’re pulling out of the American AV market where they undoubtedly don’t have the same clout as within the EU.
Naturally, Philips’s losses are affected by certain other digits they have lodged in an array of baked pastry and meat products including providing parts for the automotive industry which, like all others, has been suffering as one of the first luxuries to drop off consumers’ shopping lists.
As one of the few tech companies representing for Europe, one would hope that Philips hasn’t been taking some particularly bad financial advice and that they’ll stay on their feet after a few tweaks here and there. In the short term, they’ve ceased the repurchase of shares which could make an interesting, if risky time for people to do some investing of their own.
So then. Who’s next to cut and who’ll be the first to fold?
(via IHT)
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