BOISE, Idaho — As Boise-based Micron Technology makes plans to expand manufacturing at its Idaho headquarters and elsewhere in the U.S. over the next several years, the company plans to reduce its workforce in the more immediate future.
Micron on Wednesday announced a restructure plan, saying the company expects to reduce its "headcount by approximately 10% over calendar year 2023, through a combination of voluntary attrition and personnel reductions," according to its Dec. 21 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company points to "challenging industry conditions."
At this time, the company isn't saying where the layoffs will occur, or exactly how many jobs in Idaho will be cut. Micron is also suspending its 2023 employee bonuses and reducing executive salaries for the rest of its 2023 fiscal year.
In its SEC filing for the company's 2022 fiscal year, Micron reports a total workforce of about 48,000 team members across 38 sites in North America, Europe and Asia. According to the Idaho Department of Labor, Micron employed more than 5,000 people in Idaho as of November 2021.
The restructure plan was part of Micron's announcement of financial results for the first quarter of the company's 2023 fiscal year, which ended Dec. 1. Micron reported a GAAP net loss of $195 million, or 18 cents per diluted share, and a non-GAAP net loss of $39 million, or 4 cents per diluted share. The company reported revenue of just under $4.1 billion for the quarter, down from more than $6.6 billion the previous quarter.
In prepared remarks for the quarterly conference call with investors, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra noted that prices for computer memory products had "deteriorated significantly" in recent months.
Unit volumes for personal computers and smartphones, which require computer memory made by Micron and other semiconductors, have declined in 2022, Mehrotra noted.
"The industry is experiencing the most severe imbalance between supply and demand in both DRAM and NAND in the last 13 years," he said. "Micron is exercising supply discipline by making significant cuts to our capital expenditures and wafer starts while maintaining our competitive position."
DRAM and NAND refer to the two primary types of computer memory Micron makes. Mehrotra said the company expects demand for DRAM to grow by about 10% in 2023 and demand for NAND to grow by about 20%.
"Near term, over the next few months, we expect gradually improving demand trends for memory, as customer inventory levels improve further, new CPU platforms are launched, and China demand starts to grow as its economy reopens," Mehrotra said. "Longer term, we continue to expect strong demand growth across diverse end markets..."
In the news release accompanying its quarterly financial report, Mehrotra said the company's "strong technology, manufacturing and financial position put us on solid footing to navigate the near-term environment, and we are taking decisive actions to cut our supply and expenses."
"We expect improving customer inventories to enable higher revenue in the fiscal second half, and to deliver strong profitability once we get past this downturn," Mehrotra said.
To much fanfare, Micron in September announced plans to build a new semiconductor fab at its Boise headquarters, investing up to $15 billion through 2029; and in October announced plans to invest up to $100 billion over the same time frame in another new fab in Clay, New York.
The restructure announced Wednesday is not expected to affect those longer-term expansion plans.
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