Seagate Fires 6,500, Or 14% of Workforce, Stock Soars (zerohedge.com)

turkeydance quotes a report from Zero Hedge: [Seagate] announced today an additional restructuring plan for continued consolidation of its global footprint across Asia, EMEA and the Americas. The plan includes reducing the Company's global headcount by approximately 6,500 employees, or 14% of its global headcount by the end of fiscal year 2017. The total pretax charges for the plan will be approximately $164 million in fiscal year 2017. The restructuring activities and global footprint consolidation underway should enable the Company to be operating within its targeted Non-GAAP product gross margin range of 27-32% by the December 2016 quarter. "Computer-memory specialist Seagate announced that its Q4 revenue would be $2.65 billion, beating expectations of $2.34 billion, and up from the $2.3 billion guidance given previously," reports Zero Hedge. "The company also reported gross margin of 25% and non-GAAP gross margin of approximately 25.8% for the fiscal fourth quarter 2016, up from the previous 23% forecast. Good news, and the stock is up 12% after hours as a result."

Comments

Lay them all off!

[youngone]

Get rid of 100% of the workforce. Just think what that will do for the share price.

Re:Lay them all off!

[HornWumpus]

110% = 25% (mon-thur) + 10% (fri)

Good news!

[Scutter]

"Good news, and the stock is up 12% after hours as a result."

Well...good news except for the 6500 people you just fired. But as long as you got paid, that's all that matters, eh, Mr Investor?

Re: Good news!

[pablo_max]

That is because in Germany it is very expensive to fire your employees. In some cases, it is not possible at all.
Germany does a good job of protecting the workers and in many cases, protecting the companies from their own short shortsightedness.

At the end of the last recession, Germany was one of the few countries perfectly positioned to take advantage of the upturn in demand precisely because they were not allowed to kick out 50% of their work force. This meant that the trained workers were already in place to ramp up production.
While in other western countries, the most skilled workers, i.e. oldest and most expensive, were all on unemployment and could not get rehired since they wanted too much money.
I guess it is hippy thinking on my part. I believe that companies have a right to make money, sure. But, they should not have the right to do so at the expensive of society as a whole. Especially as society is what allows them to make money in the first place.
If everyone fucks everyone else all the time, then things wont tend to work out that well in the long run. IMHO anyhow.

6500 new votes

[Snufu]

for your local nationalist party.

Stock prices go up, money saved!

[AbRASiON]

Less customers to buy stuff though, because more and more and more and more people are either jobless or have less disposable income due to this bullshit and it keeps going on and it's starting to get bad.

I'm convinced we're on the tipping point, real close to it. The division between the rich and the poor is about to be truly exposed soon.

Re:Stock prices go up, money saved!

[Feral Nerd]

You people are ridiculous. You have what unemployment levels in the USA - just 5%? So stop saying that more and more people are jobless!

Unemployment statistics don't tell you everything. You can have 5% unemployment with 40% of the nation working jobs that pay so badly they can't hardly live off the salary and have to take extra jobs only to find that this still isn't enough. That's the resentment driving Brexit, that's the resentment driving every single Nationalist nut-bag party in Europe and that's what's driving Donald Trump.

Brexit for example has been sold as a fix-all solution to all the problems that ail people in the 'rust belt' of Britain. If we just limit or eliminate immigration, if we just leave the EU and make one sided trade agreements with China and Russia, If we just leverage our 'special relationship' with the USA (which, incidentally, most Americans are blissfully unaware of) to get a better trade agreement with the USA than the EU ever will, if we can just become an off shore tax haven for Europe... if, if, if... then everything will be OK and a golden flood of high paying jobs will flood the disenfranchised working poor in the UK. The thing I am afraid of is that even if the UK economy booms after Brexit, even if the economic growth in the UK explodes, that this will not benefit the people that voted for Brexit. Manufacturing jobs will not return, cracking down on immigrants will not happen and if it does it will not cause a sharp increase in wages for the working poor accompanied with a return of manufacturing jobs to the UK. Successive British governments run by political parties whose leadership is made up of wealthy elites will not tackle the root of the problem with the creation of well paying jobs, no more cutbacks in education, more money spent on education (which will have to continue for the next 20 years before it shows effect), and that there will be no effort to fix the National Health Service (despite what it said on that bloody bus), etc., etc... When the working poor in the UK find in a few years that they have yet again been stuck with a bucket full of shit they'll be even more angry except now the EU can't be blamed for it anymore.

The same essentially goes for Trump and the economically disenfranchised in the USA. If Trump actually becomes president and even if he gets reelected I seriously doubt that he will do anything for the urban and rural poor in the USA who live on a pittance pay working two or three jobs and that even if Trump tries to do something he'll meet with ferocious resistance from the wealthy and privileged classes. The net result is that all those angry three job working urban and rural poor who are voting for Trump now out of anger will find themselves, in a few years, if he gets elected, being shafted even worse by the likes of the Koch brothers than they are today and they'll be way more pissed off. All this while the US economy is booming, unemployment is low, growth is high and the purchasing power of their salary just shrunk again. Oh, and NO, I do not think Hilary Clinton will do anything to fix the problems that ail the USA. I also think that Bernie Sanders, if he had been elected, would have earnestly tried to fix these problems but that he would have been defeated by the same wealthy and privileged classes that will defeat Trump in the unlikely event that he tries to do anything to benefit his disenfranchised electoral base.