Friday, December 12, 2008

Fairchild Semiconductor slashes 12 percent of workforce

By Mass High Tech staff

South Portland, Maine, chipmaker Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc. has plans to cut 12 percent, about 1,100 people, from its global workforce. The cost-cutting measure is expected to save the chipmaker about $33 million annually in compensation expenses, the company said. It did not, however, specify which locations would be affected by the job cuts.

Meantime, Fairchild (NYSE: FCS) will pay out $12 million to $16 million in severance and other restructuring costs. Research and development projects will not be affected by the job cuts, said Fairchild president and CEO Mark Thompson said in a statement. He added that the restructuring is part of a strategy to make the operations run more efficiently.

The company had earlier projections of fourth-quarter sales between $338 million and $360 million; In a statement today Fairchild officials re-adjusted those numbers to about $320 million in sales for the fourth quarter. The earlier, and higher, projections for the fourth quarter represented a sequential decline of 16 percent to 21 percent from the third quarter, and a 1 percent reduction of its previous projections.

Fairchild was already predicting cutbacks of a different kind in October when the company told Mass High Tech that it planned to limit business and conference travel in 2009 due to the economic downturn.