The lay-offs are part of the 11% staff cut announced by the parent company yesterday.
Applied Materials (Israel) will lay off 70 employees as part of the 11% manpower cut announced by Applied Materials (Nasdaq:AMAT; HKSE:4336) yesterday. Applied Materials is laying off 1,750 of its 16,000 employees worldwide, including 1,000 in Israel. The company said the lay-offs were due to the continuing slowdown in the semiconductor industry.
Applied Materials is a leading manufacturer of semiconductor equipment, a market worth an estimated $150 billion. The company fired 3,700 employees last year. Applied Materials president Dan Maydan claimed at the time that no lay-offs would be made at the Israeli branch. Analysts said yesterday that the additional lay-offs were a direct consequence of the cutbacks in production by chipmakers like Motorola (NYSE:MOT) and Intel (Nasdaq:INTC). Intel recently announced it was cutting expenditure for 2002 by $500 million.
Applied Materials (Israel) was established as an R&D center in Kiryat Atidim, Tel Aviv, over a decade ago.
Applied Materials is traded on the Nasdaq and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges with a market cap of $20 billion. The company had $7 billion in sales in 2001. The share fell by almost 3% to $16 in after hours trading, following the announcement of the lay-offs.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on November 5, 2002