Océ to cut jobs after poor sales

Océ, the Dutch printer and copier maker, plans to cut 350 jobs and a further €30m in costs this year after reporting first quarter results that showed printer sales suffered in the US and Europe due to knock-on effects of the financial crisis.

The company said on Thursday sales of its high-volume printers to the financial sector in Europe and the US had been postponed and the actual amount of printing done by banks and the construction sector in the US and Spain fell, causing a drop in sales of toner, ink and print media.

“In the fourth quarter we did not see this,” Rokus van Iperen, chief executive, told the Financial Times. “It started in the course of January and worsened in February.”

He added that he could not give a forecast for the rest of the year but hoped the additional cost-cuts, which bring the mid-cap company’s total cost savings target to €80m for the year, would be sufficient. Customers postponing printer orders were generally putting off their purchases indefinitely, he said.

The firm’s net profit for the quarter to February 29 rose to €21.3m from €12.2m a year earlier, thanks to a one-off gain from the sale of a unit. Earnings per share rose to €0.24 from €0.13 but sales dropped 3.7 per cent to €702m.

Shares in Océ fell as much as nine per cent and were trading 7.6 per cent lower at €10.05 in the early afternoon.

Océ’s global workforce numbers about 24,000. Mr van Iperen said about half of those were involved in sales or onsite maintenance contracts, where the company did not plan to cut staff.

The company is gradually moving the manufacturing of its wide-format printers and cut-sheet printers from its headquarters in the Dutch town of Venlo to Asia to reduce costs, although it plans to maintain local production of toners and ink.

It had moved about 60 per cent of production to Asia at the end of 2007 and plans to reach 80 per cent by the end of the year, Mr van Iperen said.