Buy.com to cut 40 percent of its staff
By Troy Wolverton;Greg Sandoval CNET News.com
Online retailer Buy.com will lay off more than 40 percent of its staff, sources close to the company said, with the cuts affecting several departments and marking its second round of cuts in less than a month.
Sources said the 230-person staff at Buy.com will be cut by about 100 people. Earlier this month, the company trimmed its staff by 25 jobs. Executives at Buy.com did not return phone calls.
One of the few remaining Web-only retailers, Buy.com has reeled during the past month. The company's chief executive and chief financial officers resigned two weeks ago following the company's announcement that it missed fourth-quarter estimates.
Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based Buy.com reported a fourth-quarter loss of $27.4 million, or 20 cents per share, compared with the 19 cents per share analysts had predicted. The company also slashed 2001 sales projections from $1.05 billion to $600 million.
The company's share price has slid since the company's initial public offering a year ago, when it raised $186 million. Buy.com saw a high of $26.40 the day after its IPO, and since then it has marked a steady decline. When the markets closed Monday, Buy.com shares were trading at 41 cents.
Multitudes of online merchants have gone out of business and those remaining are under siege, including the Internet's largest retailer Amazon.com.
Amazon has had to fight off analyst assertions that the company could run out of cash by the end of the year. Last week, The Washington Post reported that Amazon's suppliers were growing fearful that the company faced insolvency, a condition that, if it worsens, could lead suppliers to eventually stop shipping goods to the Seattle-based e-tailer.
The latest dot-com casualty came Monday as eToys, which was one of the Web's premier toy stores a year ago, said that it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and shutter its Web site by the end of next week.
[This message has been edited by Sammy (edited 02-27-2001).]