Tellabs to Restructure, Cut 530 Jobs

More problems were felt in the telecommunications industry with the announcement by Tellabs Inc. that as part of a restructuring, 530 people are going to lose their jobs. Here is the Light Reading Newsletter with the details:

Tellabs Inc. has succumbed to increasing market pressure and initiated a restructuring process that will see the company focus on its packet optical products, mobile backhaul systems and Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) capabilities.

As a result of the downsizing, about 530 staff (around 16 percent of its total headcount) will be laid off and the company will take a restructuring charge of about US$107 million. The company previously announced job cuts in July 2011. (See Tellabs Cutting 10% of Staff.)

Tellabs currently has 3,250 staff. It still has 125 jobs to cut from its previously announced reduction and will now axe a further 530. The company tells Light Reading, though, that it also plans to hire 105 new staff, which will bring its post-restructuring headcount to around 2,700.

The restructuring decision comes amid what Tellabs CEO Rob Pullen describes in the company's official announcement as "a climate of economic uncertainty."

So what was the cause of this announcement?

That climate hammered the company's revenues and profits in 2011. For the full year Tellabs reported revenues of nearly $1.29 billion, down 21.7 percent compared with 2010, and a net loss of $188.4 million compared with a profit of $155.6 million the previous year.

In the fourth quarter, Tellabs generated revenues of $316.8 million, down 22.9 percent from a year earlier, and posted a net loss of $4.9 million, better than the $10.9 million the vendor lost a year earlier. Some other vendors, but not all, also found the final quarter of 2011 tough going.

So, the final quarter of 2011 was tough going, huh? But the mainstream media keeps telling us that since the malls were chocked full of drooling consumer zombies that our worries are over and now dawns a brighter economic future for us all. Obviously, somebody is lying to us.


Bonus: Soon, it's going to be harder and harder to get The Information