News

posted on 01 May 2008 13:00

SanDisk is reportedly firing 30-40 workers from amongst its 700 Israeli employees.

The company makes flash memory-based thumb drives, music players, memory cards and solid state drives (SSDs) and is re-organising its cost stucture world-wide by consolidating activities. It has 3,200 employees overall and more lay-offs, up to 5 percent of its workforce - 160, are expected, in the marketing and administration areas.

The Q1fy08 results for SanDisk showed modest growth of 8 percent year on year to $850 million. Eli Harari, SanDisk chairman and CEO, said at the time: “depressed market pricing has outpaced our aggressive cost reductions," and "We are focused on cost controls and expense reductions.”

He mentioned the current 'difficult times' in the flash industry with much price competition affecting sanDisk's gross margin. He is trying to de-commoditize SanDisk's business as much as possible.

CFO and EVP Judy Bruner said: "We have implemented significant expense controls across the company and are working to reduce investment in certain programs and projects and streamline business operations. ... improving profitability is a top focus for our management team"

Nothing was said in the earnings call about layoffs. There's no easy money to be made in the flash business.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}