Cohu Eliminates 60 Jobs

San Diego’s Cohu (NASDAQ: [[ticker:COHU]]), which makes test-handling equipment for semiconductor manufacturers, disclosed some “headcount reductions,” without being more specific, when it reported its fourth-quarter financial results on Thursday.

This afternoon, I tracked down Cohu chief financial officer Jeffrey Jones, who said the company laid off 60 employees, which consisted of roughly 40 workers in San Diego and 20 elsewhere. The cuts represent about 6 percent of Cohu’s workforce. Check our updated San Diego layoff tracker here.

Cohu says it has taken other steps to reduce costs and preserve cash, including pay cuts, suspending the company’s matching 401(k) plan, reduced work hours, and periods of mandatory unpaid time off. The company’s global workforce now totals about 900 employees, which includes some 500 at Cohu’s San Diego headquarters.

Cohu, which paid $80 million in December to acquire a German rival named Rasco, said the company’s financial results reflected the industry’s weak business conditions.

During the company’s conference call with analysts yesterday, Cohu CEO James Donahue said, “Cohu has been severely impacted by the global economic crisis.” Donahue added that many customers of Cohu’s backend semiconductor equipment appear to have stopped spending for new equipment and there are signs customers also are reducing their purchases of spare test handlers and related-but-undisclosed “nonessential” equipment.

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.