Philips To Cut 13% of Jobs in Safety and Profitability Drive (reuters.com) 22
Dutch health technology company Philips will scrap another 6,000 jobs worldwide as it tries to restore its profitability and improve the safety of its products following a recall of respiratory devices that knocked off 70% of its market value. From a report: Half of the job cuts will be made this year, the company said on Monday, adding that the other half will be realised by 2025. The new reorganisation brings the total amount of job cuts announced by new Chief Executive Roy Jakobs in recent months to 10,000, or around 13% of Philips' current workforce.
People are the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those pesky people keep making unsafe products so the brilliant Philips managers have decided to cut people so they won't make unsafe products?
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They had both growth and profits (Score:4, Insightful)
They're going to keep trying to cause a recession and get us all fired. And we don't have any bargaining power because we gave that up in the 90s. I can't even tell you what we got in return for that. I guess an extra $20 a month in our paycheck versus the couple thousand in pay cuts we took over the same period of time?
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I think underlying this is the economic fact that the value of an income stream is discounted by the perceived riskiness. So it's not enough to turn a profit, you need to turn a profit that is large relative to the risk entailed. That's how Philips has endured a 70% reduction in market cap even *after* it has dealt with the huge recall. The business looks riskier than it did five years ago.
They make light bulbs (Score:2, Interesting)
At this point you're just making excuses. It's weird and eerie. Like a Stockholm syndrome or a stepford wife... It's a fundamental worship of Wall Street style capitalism where your mind is boxed in and you can't think of any other way. I'm sorry man but you're working backwards from your conclu
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One part of Philips makes light bulbs. Aside from the fact that LED bulbs last a lot longer on average than incandescent (so people are generally buying fewer light bulbs), do you think it takes a company of 46,000 people to make light bulbs, but 40,000 won't be able to do it?
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Well, 40K or 46K people, it still took them quite a number of years to finally release a slim HUE ceiling light.
Oh, boy, somebody doesn't know (Score:2)
My point is that their risks aren't all that high. They make various packaged good electronics. It's a well established market and a well established brand with a very, very well established distribution network in a world where anti-trust law enforcement has long since gone the way of the dodo.
That was a bit much to type so I wrote "they make light bulbs" and counted on my audience to extrapolate. I guess I over estimated...
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Yeah, it's the Procter and Gamble theory of stock investing. When things get so bad people stop buying soap, you've got bigger problems than your stocks underperforming. But that said, you can lose a *lot* of money in medical devices, and lightbulbs are commodity that is no longer protected by a cartel like they were in the old days. That means Philips is competing with cheap off-brand Chinese bulbs. DVDs used to be a cash cow too, but the world moves on.
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Philips does not make light bulbs anymore. That's spun out into a different company called Signify. In fact they don't make any household electronics anymore. Philips is purely a healthcare company now. There will remain a need for MRI scanners but the question is how many and at what profit margin.
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Nope. Philips today is a healthcare company. It produces devices ranging from the innocuous (shaver, electric toothbrush) via various medical imaging systems to the potentially lethal (respirators)
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They're going to keep trying to cause a recession and get us all fired.
You've used this line over and over again which makes me think you don't have a clue how recessions work. Recessions aren't good. Not for you, not for me, not for the government, not for the central bank, not for trade, not for corporations, not for Wallstreet suits.
No one is trying to cause a recession. It's literally the one thing everyone in the world wants to avoid.
uhhhhh..... (Score:2)
As a Philips CPAP user... (Score:2)
I am happy to see them get punished for their absolutely disastrous handling of their faulty (and in some cases seriously dangerous) CPAP gear. AND they knew there were problems with their gear: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/1... [nytimes.com] (sorry for paywall)
While I do feel for the employees who were probably not part of the business decisions, it took TWO $#@%@ YEARS, yes YEARS, to finally resolve this issue and replace my CPAP. First, they were promising quick repairs, then it was going to be longer, then I got anot
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Still waiting for mine. (Score:2)
They won't talk to you without a current prescription. My machine is over a decade old and I'm still using it nightly, it's all I have.
Correct headline (Score:4, Interesting)
Philips To Cut 13% of Jobs in Profitability Drive Required due to Expensive Safety Mistakes
Read again? (Score:2)