Monster to cut Boston jobs
Posted on February 12, 2012
Job board Monster Worldwide said last week that is has decided to implement a series of cost-saving measures including cutting Boston jobs.
It plans ona reduction of approximately 400 associates, or 7% of its full-time staff, consolidation of certain office facilities, and continuing discretionary-spending and office and general expense controls.
Monster said it expects these reductions to result in annualized savings of approximately $100 million and provide the flexibility to enhance the Companys marketing and sales efforts to improve long-term growth prospects and profitability.
As a result of these initiatives, Monster expects to record a cumulative pre-tax charge within the range of $30 million to $40 million, of which $25 – $35 million is expected to be cash expenditures. The majority of the associated charges are expected to be recorded in the first quarter 2012.
Sal Iannuzzi, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Monster Worldwide, said, In 2011, our Global Careers bookings increased 18% year over year despite a more challenging economic environment in the latter half. We also significantly improved profitability, with an operating margin of 7% in 2011 compared to approximately break-even in 2010, and had $250 million in cash and cash equivalents at year-end. Our focus in 2012 will be to further leverage our product leadership and global platform, and increase customer adoption. At the same time, we are taking difficult but necessary steps to implement cost savings initiatives that will provide us the flexibility to enhance our marketing and sales efforts to continue to improve long-term growth prospects and profitability. Finally, we will continue to return capital to our shareholders through executing on our $250 million share repurchase program. We are confident that with the successful execution of our strategies, we can drive results for our shareholders and our customers alike.
Innovation continues to be fundamental to our growth strategy as demonstrated by our differentiated product portfolio and solutions. SeeMore, the markets first cloud-based semantic search and analytics platform for managing companies resume databases, is gaining significant traction with our customers, and we continue to enhance the features and functionalities of BeKnown, our professional networking application on Facebook. These offerings, combined with our portfolio of advanced recruitment products, position Monster well for future growth, continued Iannuzzi.