Wilmington, Massachusetts-based Charles River Laboratories, a pharmaceutical contract research organization specializing in preclinical and clinical laboratory, gene therapy, and cell therapy services for the pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotechnology industries, has announced a 3% reduction in force.
Up to 564 employees will be targeted for layoffs.
According to Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer James C. Foster, “Our financial performance through the first half of this year has been largely in line with our initial outlook; however, forward-looking DSA trends suggest that demand will not improve during the second half of the year as we had previously anticipated, and in fact, will decline for global biopharmaceutical clients. This has caused us to take a much more negative view of our growth prospects for the second half of the year. We believe that our clients are currently more focused on reassessing their budgets and reprioritizing their pipelines, but continue to view strategic outsourcing as a compelling solution to improve their cost efficiency and speed to market, presenting a longer-term opportunity for us.”
“Therefore, it is imperative for us to navigate through this period of softer demand by aggressively managing our cost structure, initiating new and innovative ways to transform our business, being disciplined with our investments, and enhancing our commercial efforts to win new business. We firmly believe that our clients will continue to seek life-saving treatments for rare diseases and other unmet medical needs, which drives us to take further steps to position Charles River for the future. These steps will enable us to emerge as a stronger, leaner partner to help our clients achieve their goals by utilizing our scientific expertise and flexible solutions.
Change is coming. There will always be a tomorrow, no matter how much you may try to ignore it. There are no guarantees in life or promises for a bright future. We see good people being laid off through no fault of their own. Just because something bad hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't. It can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. No one is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow and still have a job by evening. While many employees can read the writing on the wall; why do most assume it’s targeted at someone else? Are you now wondering, Am I Next?