Weatherford has begun firing employees and said it had targeted a reduction of 5,000, mostly in the Western Hemisphere, by the end of the first quarter. Then on Thursday morning’s conference call the company added another 3,000 employees to the reduction, bringing the total job losses to 8,000 by the end of June. The company’s chief financial officer said that Weatherford’s headcount will be less than 50,000 by the end of the year, compared with a total of around 67,000 at the end of 2013.
Weatherford is the second major services firm to announce big cuts in employees. The sector’s largest company, Schlumberger Ltd. (NYSE: SLB) said in January that it would chop 9,000 jobs. Neither Halliburton Co. (NYSE: HAL) nor Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI) have referred to job cuts, probably due to the proposed merger between the two. Once (or if) the merger is completed, job cuts are virtually certain to follow.
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In its monthly report on job cuts, Challenger, Gray & Christmas attributed 21,322 lost jobs directly to the sharp decline in crude oil prices. That is a full 40% of the jobs lost in January down to tumbling crude oil prices.
Weatherford’s stock traded up nearly 5% Thursday morning, at $11.74 in a 52-week range of $9.40 to $24.88. Nothing like a massive layoff to boost stock prices.
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