IMS cuts jobs again
IMS Health Inc. is cutting more than 850 jobs, more than a tenth of its work force, including plans for “right-sizing the headquarters function.”
The Norwalk-based company collects information on pharmaceutical sales and sells it to drug companies for use as competitive intelligence on rival products. In the second quarter, IMS Health reported a $63 million profit on $523 million in revenue, down 13 percent.
IMS is culling some 170 jobs at undisclosed locations in the United States and the rest overseas. The company plans to take a pre-tax charge of between $110 million and $120 million in the current quarter to pay for the restructuring, and expects to save at least $80 million on an annualized basis by 2011.
“I’d like to think that we are bottoming, although I am a little gun-shy on this point,” said CEO David Carlucci, in a conference call with investment analysts. “Pharmaceutical executives ”¦ are clearly focused on the right strategy issues ”¦ but in the short-term they have clamped things down very, very tight. I really firmly believe that this will not go on forever; there is too much activity.”
IMS”™ last major layoff was in the fourth quarter of 2007, when it laid plans to jettison 1,070 jobs that year and in 2008.
“The nature of this restructuring is quite different from our actions in 2008, which were primarily focused on a streamlining of our customer delivery and development function and a redeployment of our client-facing teams,” Carlucci said. “This restructuring is a 12-to-15-month program that goes deeper and involves all areas of the business and all regions.”