Kyocera to cut 10,000 jobs this year

The market has rewarded restructuring by Japan's techs, and was pushing Kyocera up 4% despite a slump in the Nikkei

By CNN's Alex Frew McMillan in Hong Kong

KYOTO, Japan (CNN) -- Circuit maker Kyocera Corp. said Thursday that it will cut 10,000 jobs this year at its overseas divisions.

The cuts amount to 20 percent of the company's total work force of 51,000.

A spokeswoman told CNN the cuts will involve a combination of layoffs, early retirement and natural attrition.

Some of the trimming has already taken place as people left the company and were not replaced, the spokeswoman, Elly Yoshikawa, said.

Cuts not focused in California

Kyocera does not plan to trim jobs in Japan. Yoshikawa also played down a Yomiuri newspaper report that the job losses will revolve around Kyocera's U.S. divisions.

It makes cell phones and drills for circuit boards at two subsidiaries in California. But Yoshikawa said the Kyocera cuts will be spread throughout its overseas operations.

The announcement comes a week after the Kyoto-based company halved its profit forecasts for this business year.

Last week, Kyocera said it expected to make $416.1 million (50 billion yen) this business year, down from an earlier profit forecast of 98 billion yen.

Kyocera had sales of $10.2 billion in fiscal 2001. Japan accounts for half its revenues, but it also has operations in Europe, North and South America and elsewhere in Asia.

The slowdown in demand for electronics products, particularly computers, has hit hard. Kyocera gets around two-thirds of its sales from ceramic products that make computer-chip parts, solar panels and even hip implants.

It is the world's biggest maker of integrated ceramic packages for computers. It also makes cell phones, photocopiers and cameras.

Latest in a long line

The Kyoto-based company is the latest in a long line of Japanese technology companies to slash its work force.

Most of Japan's big chip companies have announced restructurings and, often, slowdowns in production.

The country's largest chip company, Toshiba, said Monday it would get rid of 19,000 jobs over the next two years. That's 10 percent of Toshiba's work force.

Fujitsu and NEC had already announced job scalebacks of their own.

The stock market has typically rewarded more-realistic profit forecasts and restructurings from Japanese techs.

Kyocera Corp. stock was up 4.4 percent at 8,280 yen on Thursday morning, bucking a 1.0 percent decline in the benchmark Nikkei index.