San Diego’s Cymer (CYMI), widely viewed as a bellwether for the chipmaking industry, says it will reduce its worldwide workforce by 85 employees, or about 8 percent.
Cymer makes sophisticated ultraviolet lasers that serve as the light source in a photolithographic process used by nearly every semiconductor manufacturer to make advanced microcircuits. The company’s technology is essential for chips used in computers, cell phones and wireless devices, iPods, and other consumer electronics.
Cymer says it expects to record roughly $3.2 million in restructuring charges related to its workforce reduction in its fourth quarter financial results. The company expects the cuts will result in savings of about $8.4 million a year.
Cymer is known for closely managing its resources in anticipation of swings in the volatile semiconductor industry. Ed Brown, Cymer’s chief operating officer, said in a statement that the company had previously implemented a series of cost-saving measures, including cutbacks in employee travel, accrued vacation, outside services, and other discretionary spending cuts.
“Given the severity of the slowdown in the economy and semiconductor industry,” Brown said, “this step is necessary to align our cost structure with forecasted business levels.”
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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