NEW DELHI: US-based telecom gear maker Juniper Networks plans to lay off nearly 440 employees globally, incurring a cost of $59 million. Of this, severance and termination expenses will likely comprise $40 million. In addition, Juniper expects to incur other restructuring and related costs of approximately $19 million, it said in a recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).The majority of the layoffs are expected to be completed by the end of Q1 FY24, depending on local law and consultation requirements. The layoffs are part of a restructuring plan Juniper announced earlier this year.

Juniper said in the filing that the restructuring plan is “a result of a thorough review of the company’s business objectives, and is intended to focus on realigning resources and investments in long-term growth opportunities”.

“The company believes the plan will further allow it to continue to prudently manage operating expenses in order to deliver improved operating margin,” it added.

The network gear maker, and one of the early adopters of artificial intelligence (AI), reported $1.43 billion in revenue in Q2, up by 13% year-over-year and up 4% on a sequential basis. Its cloud business slumped 6% year-over-year in the second quarter while the service provider business grew marginally at 1% year-over-year.

The company’s chief executive Rami Rahim in the second quarter earnings call said, “I remain extremely encouraged by the momentum we’re seeing in our enterprise business, which delivered record revenue results and accounted for more than 45% of our total revenue, representing both our largest and fastest growing vertical for a third consecutive quarter.” “….given the digestion of prior purchases, and the uncertain timing of customer deployments, particularly amongst some of our larger cloud customers, we have less visibility, and our revenue results are likely to be pressured over the next few quarters. Based on these dynamics, we are reducing our full year revenue growth forecast. We remain committed to delivering improved profitability and still expect to deliver greater than 100 basis points of operating margin improvement in 2023,” Rahim had said.

Vodafone, Sweden’s Ericsson, BT, Crown Castle, among many other telecom companies, have laid down their plans to reduce their headcount over the next years.