Altos Computer Systems Inc, San Jose reacted to last week’s $3.6m net loss on declining sales for its fiscal third quarter (CI No 1,164) by handing pink slips to 60 of its employees, 8% of the total. As well as cutting staff – across the board apart from sales, in both the US and Europe – to lower costs, the San Jose builder of multi-user Unix supermicros has added another layer of field sales staff below the 15 regional district sales managers to keep in constant touch with the company’s value-added resellers. The company hopes to return to profits in the fourth quarter and might just be able to save its year – the nine-month loss after an extraordinary gain of $5.7m was only $1.4m, but the nine-month sales slumped 19% to $105m.
