Time For The Painful Figures - Part 2

Since my last blog, things have moved on a bit.

Avid has posted it's results or lack of them with a $32 million loss. Avid generated revenue of $206.7 million in the fourth quarter, which was down 20% from a year ago. For the full year, Avid posted a $129.8 loss on $844.9 million in revenue compared with $4.9 million loss on $929.6 million of revenue in 2007.

Avid's restructuring with 20% headcount reduction in October was also embellished by a $13.3 million income from the sale of Softimage business to Autodesk. Avid also took a $9.6 million charge on its poorly performing Pinnacle consumer video business.

Reuters have said that Thomson SA had warned it was likely to breach certain debt covenants and needed to bolster its balance sheet, notably by selling more non-core activities, sending its shares down around 20 percent on Thursday. These asset disposals were indicated to be it's Grass Valley and PRN business units.

The loss-making group said it would sell businesses which had contributed around €1.0 billion ($1.3 billion) to 2008 sales. Once disposed of , Thomson would in the future focus on providing services to media content creators, presumably through its Technicolor businesses.

Chief Financial Officer Stephane Rougeot told a conference call with analysts that, once completed, the asset sales plan would cut annual revenue to "slightly below" 4 billion euros.

Previously, Thomson undertook to restructure or sell unprofitable business in order to raise profits, which increases cash and reduces debt, all in line with requests from investors including a simplification of the company's structure and a disposal of loss making units. As of 4th February, Thomson's share price was at $1.36 but analysts suggest it may fall as low as 80 cents.

Panasonic have announced a world-wide workforce reduction of 15,000 with a possible closure of up to 27 factories. The confirmation of where the cuts will fall is yet to be disclosed.

www.reuters.com