Micron Swings to Loss, Announces Job Cuts

Micron Technology Inc. swung to a loss in its latest quarter and announced a cost-cutting plan that includes layoffs as the memory chip maker feels the pinch of the soft demand for personal computers.

Shares of the company, down about 27% over the past 12 months, fell 7.3% to $12.75 in after-hours trading.

The company didn't specify how many jobs would be cut as part of the new "cost savings" program that aims to save about $80 million per quarter during the coming 2017 fiscal year. Micron said it expects to incur charges of $70 million in connection to the plan, mostly in the final quarter of fiscal 2016.

One of the world's largest memory chip makers, Micron is the last remaining U.S. supplier of a widely used variety called dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, a key component in personal computers.

"Although we have made good progress in deploying our advanced DRAM and NAND technologies, we continue to face challenging market conditions," Micron Chief Executive Mark Durcan said.

Sales of personal computers have been under pressure. World-wide shipments of personal computers fell in the first quarter of 2016 compared with a year earlier, the sixth consecutive quarter of declines and the first time since 2007 that shipments dropped below 65 million units, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

For the period ended June 3, Micron reported a loss of $215 million, or a loss of 21 cents a share, down from a profit of $491 million, or 42 cents, posted a year ago.

Excluding certain items, the company posted an adjusted loss of 8 cents a share.

Revenue fell 25% to $2.9 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast an adjusted loss of 9 cents a share on $3 billion in revenue.

Write to Ezequiel Minaya at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 30, 2016 17:15 ET (21:15 GMT)

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