Xansa is to axe an additional 100 staff as spending cuts across the customer base force the troubled systems and consultancy group to further lower profit forecasts for the year to 30 April 2002.
Xansa says it now expects profits (before exceptional items) for the current year to be at the low end of market expectations. Further, the £8 million restructuring announced in January which involved 250 redundancies, has taken longer to implement resulting in an unexpected carry-over of an extra £2 million of operating costs in the current year.
The 100 job losses announced today are in addition to January's total, and will add an additional cost of £2.3 million, raising the exceptional charge to £10.3 million.
Hilary Cropper, executive chairman of Xansa, comments: "At the time of our interim results in January, we told the market that our business change unit would breakeven this financial year and that sadly there would be 250 redundancies. Unfortunately, the market for discretionary spend by our clients has tightened further since then."
He says the pipeline for new orders, particularly large transformational programmes and outsourcing contracts, has strengthened since January. Consequently, the company is continuing to invest in business process management and the development of its operations in the USA and Northern Europe.