Seagate to Fire a Tenth of Workers in Thailand, Post Says
1/19/00 6:16:00 PM
Source: Bloomberg News
Bangkok, Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Seagate Technology Inc., the world's No. 1 maker of computer disk drives, plans to fire about a tenth of its workers in Thailand, where it's the largest private employer, the Bangkok Post reported, citing Sakchai Sakkulawong, an official at the Social Welfare and Labor Protection Department. Seagate will sack 2,900 workers at three of its five plants in Thailand, where it now employs about 33,000, as part of the California-based company's global reduction of 29,000. Seagate will pay workers about 10 months of their last salary, the report said.
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Western Digital to Exit Enterprise Disk-Drive Market, Fire 400
1/19/00 3:11:00 PM
Source: Bloomberg News
Irvine, California, Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Western Digital Corp., the No. 3 computer disk-drive maker, said it will stop making drives used in high-end computers and fire most of the 420 workers in its Minnesota facility to focus on personal computers.
The workers are in its Rochester, Minnesota, design center, which was opened in December, 1994. The company expects to take an unspecified charge in its fiscal 2000 quarter, ending March 31. In the fiscal year ended July 3, 1999, the high-end or so- called enterprise-class drives used in high-speed servers and computer workstations accounted for about 11 percent of the company's $2.8 billion in revenue.
Western Digital competes against No. 1 Seagate Technology Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., the world's largest computer company, in selling high-end disk drives. The disk-drive market was hit last year with falling prices that forced Western Digital, Seagate and some others to cut employees and costs.
''We are exiting the enterprise hard-drive business because our share has been declining in a market that is getting increasingly competitive,'' Matt Massengill, president and chief executive, said in a statement.
Western Digital said it plans to concentrate on making special devices to meet companies' growing need to store data as they bring their businesses onto the Internet.
The company also said its fiscal second-quarter loss, to be reported Jan. 25, ''was significantly lower'' than analysts' estimates of $100 million, before charges. The company was expected to report a loss of 98 cents a share, the average estimate of analysts surveyed by First Call/Thomson Financial.
Shares of the Irvine, California-based company rose 1 3/8 to 6 1/2.
Seagate last month said it was studying whether having parts made by other companies in the Philippines or elsewhere in the region would be cheaper than operating in Thailand. |
