NetApp confirms plans to cut 900 jobs

Exit sign

Storage vendor NetApp has embarked on a company realignment programme that will result in 900 of the firm's staff losing their jobs.

The company confirmed the move during a conference call to discuss its fourth quarter financial results, which saw it post a profit of $174 million on the back of sales totalling $1.72billion.

This was slightly down on last year when the firm reported a $181 million profit on sales of $1.7 billion during Q4.

While difficult, we believe these decisions position us well for the future.

During the call, transcribed here by Seeking Alpha, Tom Georgens, chief executive of NetApp, said the company had performed well during Q4, with strong demand for its products across all regions.

"[We saw] an increase in the number of deals over $1 million and a record number of deals over $5 million," he said.

"We are seeing rapid uptake of clustered ONTAP as well as our new platforms. We recently announced a family of all-flash arrays...we also saw a record quarter for branded E-Series products and expansion of our Flexpod solution set."

Despite this, he said the company has started to undergo a restructure, which will result in the "elimination" of just over 900 jobs or seven per cent of its global workforce.

"We took this action to better align our resources and investments to our most strategic initiatives," he continued.

"While difficult, we believe these decisions position us well for the future, enabling us to achieve our business objectives, profitability and profit growth expectations."

The vendor also announced plans to give its stock repurchase programme a $1.6 billion boost over the next three years, which would increase its overall value to $3 billion.

This is part of a wider plan by NetApp to increase the value it returns to shareholders.

Caroline Donnelly is the news and analysis editor of IT Pro and its sister site Cloud Pro, and covers general news, as well as the storage, security, public sector, cloud and Microsoft beats. Caroline has been a member of the IT Pro/Cloud Pro team since March 2012, and has previously worked as a reporter at several B2B publications, including UK channel magazine CRN, and as features writer for local weekly newspaper, The Slough and Windsor Observer. She studied Medical Biochemistry at the University of Leicester and completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Magazine Journalism at PMA Training in 2006.