28 August 2002 -- Nortel Networks Corp has lowered its forecast for Q3/2002 revenues from "essentially flat" on Q2's USD2.77bn to "about 10% down". It says that this is mainly due to further spending reductions by US telecoms service providers.
The company expects on-going pressure on customer capital spending "well into 2003". To achieve its priority of returning to profitability by end-June 2003, Nortel has reduced its target quarterly revenue break-even point from USD3.2bn to less than USD2.6bn.
To enable this, Nortel is to cut costs further. After having 95,500 staff in December 2000, it plans to cut staffing by another 7,000 by the end of Q4/2002 to 35,000, about 17% fewer than the 42,000 it forecast at the end of May after it announced 3,500 job cuts from its long-haul business by end-Q3/2002.