Mar 27, 2001 - 03:00 PM

American Greetings to Cut 1,500 Full-Time Jobs By M.R. Kropko The Associated Press

CLEVELAND (AP) - Hurt by competition from the Internet and cut-rate greeting cards, American Greetings Corp. said Tuesday it will lay off 1,500 employees, or 13 percent of its full-time work force. The nation's No. 2 greeting card company lost $127.7 million in its fourth quarter and $113.8 million for the fiscal year that ended Feb. 28.

The layoffs are to be completed by next February.

American Greetings said in a statement that it is also "consolidating" six facilities. It was not clear how many closings that might mean.

The company has more than 11,600 full-time employees worldwide, including about 2,200 at its headquarters in Cleveland. It has thousands more in part-time merchandising and support positions.

The 95-year-old company said its sales have been hurt by people increasingly using the Internet to communicate. The company's own online venture, AmericanGreetings.com, has been a drag on profit.

Market leader Hallmark Inc., based in Kansas City, Mo., has said it has not been hurt by the Internet.

American Greetings is also up against lower-priced competition, including Hallmark's Warm Wishes line of 99-cent cards.

American Greetings stock was down 14.3 percent at $12.45 Tuesday afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange. Its stock had been trading at nearly $20 a share as recently as November.

---

On the Net:

http://www.americangreetings.com

AP-ES-03-27-01 1500EST © Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2001

Answers

Mar 27, 2001 - 03:43 PM

Hiring Freeze Ordered at Walt Disney World The Associated Press

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) - Walt Disney World, central Florida's largest employer, is planning a hiring freeze in the face of what appears to be a slowing economy. Only the most critical positions at Disney will be filled, and only then with approval of top executives, Walt Disney World spokesman Bill Warren told the Orlando Sentinel Monday.

The decision affects all departments and jobs, both hourly and salary, within Disney's four theme parks and 17 resorts. Disney World employs 56,000.

"Walt Disney World has put a temporary hold on hiring as it evaluates its response to the slowing economy," Warren said. "We wanted to make sure that we stay on track and that we meet our growth targets."

Disney World President Al Weiss, who ordered the freeze last week, earlier acknowledged that the company is taking steps to counter softening in bookings for summer and fall. Weiss said Disney World will see modest declines in attendance this year.

Universal Orlando and SeaWorld Orlando officials said they do not have hiring freezes. However, those companies are likely to follow suit, analysts said.

"Disney is the leader," said Abraham Pizam, professor of tourism at the University of Central Florida. "Universal and SeaWorld will say Disney is pretty smart. They know their business."

The hiring freeze comes only a year after Disney World was going to extraordinary lengths to find workers. Warren would not say how long the freeze is expected to last or how many positions would be affected.

The hiring freeze is limited to Disney World, officials said. Disneyland spokesman Ray Gomez said the California attraction has no plans for a hiring freeze.

AP-ES-03-27-01 1543EST © Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2001

Mar 27, 2001 - 05:13 PM

Post Office Announces Cutbacks to Reduce Losses The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Postal Service announced sharp spending cuts Tuesday, an effort to reduce looming losses. Despite an increase in stamp prices in January, the declining economic conditions and a slowdown in mail growth have the post office facing potential losses of $2 billion to $3 billion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, agency officials estimate.

The Postal Service already announced a freeze in construction spending this month.

On Tuesday the agency said that it plans to cut over the next five years 75,000 work-years in labor costs, reduce administrative costs by 25 percent and cut transportation costs by 10 percent. A work-year is the work of one person for one year. The post office employs about 798,000 people.

The cuts were announced by Deputy Postmaster General John Nolan during an industry meeting in Orlando, Fla.

He said the agency is committed to cutting costs by $2.5 billion by 2003.

---

On the Net: Post office: http://www.usps.gov

AP-ES-03-27-01 1709EST © Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2001

Mar 27, 2001 - 03:54 PM

Viant Corp. Announces Job Cuts and Office Closings The Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) - Internet consulting firm Viant Corp. Tuesday said it would cut 211 jobs, more than a third of its work force, and close offices in Houston, San Francisco and Munich because of a slump in demand. Viant also announced it expects a loss for the first quarter of between 33 cents and 36 cents a share on revenue of $14 million to $16 million.

The company said it would take a charge of $13 million to $17 million, primarily due to expenses from the office closings and layoffs.

Viant's fourth quarter losses were 14 cents a share, twice what analysts had expected. In December, Viant said it would cut 125 jobs and close its Dallas office.

Viant shares were unchanged at to $2.44 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

High-tech consultants, who rode the e-business boom in the late 1990s, have been struggling as dot-coms revenues shrink and as larger, more traditional consulting companies attract more Internet clients.

Other e-consultants, such as San Francisco-based Scient Inc., Razorfish Inc., headquartered in New York, and Marchfirst Inc., in Chicago, also have had large layoffs in recent months.

MarchFirst plans to cut its work force in half, eliminating 3,500 jobs, The New York Times reported Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the company would not comment on the report.

AP-ES-03-27-01 1553EST © Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2001

Mar 27, 2001 - 06:40 PM

Palm Beats Wall Street Expectations, but Reduces Forecast, Will Cut Jobs By May Wong The Associated Press

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Palm Inc.'s third-quarter results beat Wall Street expectations, but the leading handheld computer maker said slowing sales forced it to reduce its fourth-quarter projections and announced plans to cut about 250 jobs. Shares of Palm fell more than 35 percent on the news.

For the three months ended March 2, Palm lost $1.9 million, or less than one cent per share, compared with earnings of $11 million, or 2 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Excluding a number of factors, including the effects of amortization of goodwill and intangible assets, Palm earned $9.3 million, or 2 cents per share. Wall Street had expected the company to report earnings of a penny a share, according to a survey of analysts by First Call/Thomson Financial.

The company released its results after the close of regular trading Tuesday. Shares of Palm rose $1.06, or 8.2 percent, to $15.50 at 4 p.m. on the Nasdaq Stock Market. In after-hours trading, the shares fell $5.50 to $10.

Third-quarter revenues rose $470.8 million, up 73 percent from $272.3 million a year ago.

The Santa Clara-based company said it shipped 2.1 million devices in the quarter, up 112 percent from the year-ago quarter. Shipments since the original Palm Pilot debuted in 1996 now total nearly 13 million.

But the decelerating economy is expected to lead to flat sales growth in the fourth quarter, company officials said.

"Palm has recently begun to feel the effects of the deteriorating macroeconomic environment, resulting in reducing incoming order rate amid signs of what appears to be a sector slowdown," said Palm chief executive Carl Yankowski.

Wall Street analysts have been anxious to see what Palm officials have to say about its outlook - how the souring economy may be dampening even the fast-growing sector of personal digital assistants.

The worldwide market for PDAs is forecast to grow from 9.4 million units in 2000 to 33.7 million in 2004, according to Gartner Group Dataquest. Palm devices and other PDAs using the Palm operating system enjoyed more than 70 percent of all sales in that category in 2000.

"We're trying to figure out if they're seeing a slowness because of the economic slowdown," said Lehman Brothers analyst Joseph To. "During a recession, these kinds of devices are usually affected, so we're just being a little more cautious."

Last week, To lowered his revenue projections for Palm from $2.5 billion to $2.4 billion for the fiscal year.

For the nine months ended March 2, Palm earned $60.7 million, or 11 cents per share, on revenue of $1.394 billion. In the year-ago period, Palm earned $41.2 million, or 8 cents per share, on revenue of $707.4 million.

---

On the Net:

Palm: http://www.palm.com

AP-ES-03-27-01 1840EST © Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2001

Mar 27, 2001 - 06:14 PM

Disney to Cut 4,000 Jobs By Gary Gentile The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) - The Walt Disney Co. said Tuesday it is eliminating 4,000 full-time jobs, or about 3 percent of its global work force. The media and entertainment giant cited the "increasingly pressing challenges of the softening economic environment."

It said that it will try to achieve the cuts through a voluntary program within the next month, but that layoffs may be needed.

The cuts will come across all operating areas, including the company's corporate staff in Burbank, Calif., Disney said.

Disney employs 120,000 people worldwide, with the greatest concentration - 55,000 - in Orlando, Fla., home of Disneyworld. A company spokesman announced a hiring freeze at the park.

Disney spokesman John Dreyer said the job cuts would result in $350 million to $400 million in annual savings.

In a letter addressed to "fellow cast members," Disney chairman Michael Eisner and president Robert Iger said the company has been working to contain costs and operate more efficiently.

"But despite our progress, the economy has become more challenging in recent months and we must continue to seek ways to manage our businesses even more productively," the letter said.

Walt Disney World spokesman Bill Warren told the Orlando Sentinel the park will freeze almost all hiring because of an expected decline this year in visitors. Disneyland spokesman Ray Gomez said the Anaheim, Calif., park had no plans for a hiring freeze.

Disney's ABC Television network has struggled recently with a softening advertising market due to general weakness in the economy. Analysts have been concerned that declining consumer confidence would hurt theme park attendance.

"The news has been anticipated," said Christopher Dixon, an analyst at UBS Warburg. "There has been major concerns in the advertising market and Disney has been expanding. Disney has had an ongoing focus on cost cutting and is clearly using the current weakness in the marketing environment to trim some excess fat."

Disney announced the job cuts after the close of regular trading on the New York Stock Exchange, where it finished up $1.28 to $29.

---

On the Net: http://www.disney.com

AP-ES-03-27-01 1814EST © Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2001

Mar 28, 2001 - 12:04 AM

Nortel Plans to Cut Another 5,000 Jobs; Says It Won't Make Already Reduced Profit Forecasts By Bruce Meyerson The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) - Nortel Networks won't meet the sharply reduced profit forecasts the maker of optical and wireless network equipment set just a month ago, and now plans to eliminate 5,000 more jobs on top of the 10,000 already cut since the start of 2001. The warning Tuesday by the Canadian company, a bellwether for the technology industry, echoed the increasingly dire projections coming from Cisco Systems, the world's leading producer of network equipment for the Internet.

Those worrisome updates come amid a fragile recovery on Wall Street, which has been ravaged by fears of a potential economic recession.

In addition to revealing that profit and revenues for the first three months of the year are coming in even weaker than they seemed a month ago, Nortel also made the unsettling suggestion that business conditions have turned too difficult to make any worthwhile forecasts for the rest of 2001.

"Given the poor visibility into the duration and breadth of the economic downturn and its impact on the overall market growth in 2001, it is not possible to provide meaningful guidance for the company's financial performance for the full year," John Roth, president and chief executive officer, said in a statement.

The announcement also said Nortel will cut 5,000 more jobs in addition to the 10,000 that were announced since the start of the year, the bulk of which have already been made, the company said Tuesday.

A company spokesman said it wasn't immediately clear how many of the 5,000 positions would be eliminated through layoffs and how many through resignations, retirement and attrition.

The cost savings from the cutbacks won't be felt until next quarter, Nortel said.

Nortel's stock, already down 80 percent from an all-time high reached last summer, slid anew following Tuesday's announcement, which came after the close of regular trading. The stock slid below $15 a share in extended trading after closing 16 cents lower at $16.76 on the New York Stock Exchange,

In mid-February, Nortel slashed its first-quarter forecasts to $6.3 billion of revenue and an operating loss of 4 cents per share.

Now the company expects to post first-quarter revenues in the range of $6.1 billion to $6.2 billion and an operating loss of 10 cents to 12 cents per share.

Nortel declined, however, to revise its growth projections for the year again. Last month, the company said it expects just 15 percent growth in sales and a 10 percent gain in operating profits for the year, down from management's previously steadfast forecasts that those measures would improve 30 percent or better.

AP-ES-03-28-01 0003EST © Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

-- Anonymous, March 28, 2001

Well, this is a depressing thread....

-- Anonymous, March 28, 2001

Here's more depressing news:

Mar 28, 2001 - 12:19 PM

ADC Telecommunications to Cut 3,000 to 4,000 Jobs The Associated Press

MINNETONKA, Minn. (AP) - ADC Telecommunications is eliminating another 3,000 to 4,000 jobs, or up 18 percent of its worldwide work force, citing tough economic conditions and slower capital spending by communications service providers. The global supplier of communications equipment, software and services to local, long-distance and wireless carriers also said Wednesday it will fall well short of sales and earnings forecasts for the second quarter.

In midday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, ADC shares were down 15 percent, or $1.59, at $8.97 a share.

The announcements are the latest in a series of financial disappointments from telecommunications equipment suppliers such as Motorola, Sweden's LM Ericsson and Canada's Nortel.

The job cuts at ADC come on top of the nearly 3,000 positions already eliminated since November through layoffs and attrition. ADC had employed about 22,000 people worldwide at the beginning of 2001.

ADC also announced Wednesday that it's lowering its sales and earnings estimates for its second quarter ending April 30 and for the full fiscal year. The company issued a similar warning in January before it released first-quarter results.

"The rapid downturn of telecommunications capital spending is clearly having a greater than anticipated impact on ADC's revenue and profits this year," said Richard R. Roscitt, the company's newly appointed president and chief executive officer.

Roscitt said the job cuts are "very surgical" and are not across the board. Details are being worked out and employees in the company's headquarters are being notified of the layoffs this week, he said.

"It is not going to take place largely in our sales and service. It will take place in headquarters and in manufacturing facilities around the world," Roscitt said of the latest round of layoffs.

ADC now expects second-quarter sales of $650 million to $700 million, compared to $771 million in the second quarter last year. It also expects a loss of 10 to 15 cents per share, compared to a profit of 10 cents per share in the second quarter of 2000.

The consensus expectation of analysts surveyed by First Call/Thomson Financial had been for a profit of 9 cents per share.

The company said it would not project sales and earnings figures for fiscal 2001 until it releases second-quarter earnings in the second half of May.

---

On the Net:

ADC site: http://www.adc.com

AP-ES-03-28-01 1219EST © Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

-- Anonymous, March 28, 2001

Mar 28, 2001 - 10:06 AM

Lockheed Martin Astronautics to Cut 600 Jobs The Associated Press

LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) - Lockheed Martin's astronautics unit plans to cut 600 jobs, or 12 percent of the work force at its southern Jefferson County operation, by the end of the year. Thomas Marsh, astronautics president and general manager, said Tuesday the job cuts are already under way. He said they are occurring through attrition, though some workers are being laid off.

By the year's end, the company plans to reduce employment at the facility to about 5,000.

Marsh attributed the cuts to sluggish demand for commercial satellite launches, which has reduced rocket sales and driven down prices. Earnings at Lockheed's space systems division, which includes astronautics, fell 60 percent from 1998 to 2000.

"If you look at what's happening in the aerospace industry, it's been a downturn and restructuring set of events for a number of years," he said. "We have certainly had to take actions here to deal with that downturn."

The company also lost at least one contract to build spacecraft for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration after the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Polar Lander, both built in Lockheed Martin's Waterton Canyon plant, failed in 1999.

Lockheed Martin's space systems division announced job cuts and other cost-saving measures in February, but offered no specifics. The cuts were part of a $2.8 billion cost-reduction plan at the Bethesda, Md.- based aerospace company.

--

On the Net:

http://www.lockheedmartin.com

AP-ES-03-28-01 1005EST © Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

-- Anonymous, March 28, 2001

Mar 28, 2001 - 05:10 PM

Home Improvement Firm Scaling Back, Firing 2,600 Workers The Associated Press

IRVINE, Calif. (AP) - The slowing economy will force HomeBase Inc. to fire more than 2,600 workers and close 25 home improvement centers it had planned to convert into home furnishing stores. HomeBase said Tuesday that it plans to open 42 House2Home stores, down from the 67 conversions previously planned. The layoffs, including 140 at its headquarters, represent more than 25 percent of its work force.

The slowing economy prompted reconsideration of the "scope and pace of the rollout," including the wisdom of opening a new concept in several states where it had not yet been tested, HomeBase spokeswoman Michele Feller said.

HomeBase also said it will take a $90 million to $100 million after- tax charge associated with the store closures.

The pullback sent shares down 23 cents, or 13.5 percent, to $1.47 at the close of trading on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday.

"They're making a smaller bet," said Brett Hendrickson, an analyst with B. Riley & Co. "It makes the ultimate pot of gold at the end of the conversion process somewhat less, but it also takes away a lot of the risk, because they're going to have a lot less debt."

Some questioned whether there will be a pot of gold of any size for HomeBase.

"I think when you've got a retailer who changes his colors midstream ... it should be a huge red flag that flies up," said Brian Postol, an analyst with A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc.

[end snip]

-- Anonymous, March 28, 2001

Mar 28, 2001 - 04:55 PM

Longaberger Cutting 400 Jobs The Associated Press

NEWARK, Ohio (AP) - Basket maker Longaberger Co. said Wednesday it will cut 400 jobs, about 5 percent of its work force, because of the slowing economy. The jobs will be cut at the company's operation in Frazeysburg effective April 13. About 300 of the jobs being cut involve workers making baskets, and 100 are support staff.

Longaberger has 8,300 employees overall.

Company spokeswoman Julie Moorehead said there had not been a significant drop in basket sales but that the company had been too optimistic in its business plan.

"With the downturn in the economy, we have to tighten our belts and look to streamline," she said.

The workers to be laid off have been with the company for less than a year, Moorehead said. They will get preferential consideration for the 350 openings Longaberger has elsewhere in the company.

AP-ES-03-28-01 1655EST © Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

-- Anonymous, March 28, 2001