FTP Software Inc has fired 300, or 38% of its workforce in the wake of its restructuring into three business units, which was announced last month, and took effect last week. As a result, the virtual IP and TCP/IP networking company has issued profit warnings for both the quarter just ended and the quarter just started. This time it put a figure on last month’s alert that said results would fall substantially below its internal goals, by which we now know it means a pre-tax loss between $13.7m to $14.2m – that’s about $0.40 to $0.42 per share. First Call’s average Wall Street estimate for the quarter was a $0.25 net loss per share, but that was before the first warning. The cost of paying off all the ex-employees, plus closing some unspecified facilities will result in a third quarter pre-tax charge of between $13m and $16m, or $0.38 to $0.47 per share. The company can’t say what the end of result of the quarter will be as it’s only just started. On Thursday, senior VP of marketing and strategic planning, Susan Bostrom and senior VP of global engineering and development, John Keller abruptly resigned from the company (CI No 3,206). The three business units of FTP are now the Agent/Directory Management unit, VIP Network Applications unit and the IP Technology unit. There’s still no word from the company on the work it’s doing with IBM Corp in the area of web- to-host connectivity for IBM’s terminal emulation technology and putting TCP/IP into IBM’s SNA Systems Network Architecture.
