San Diego – Gateway will shut the door on 19 of its retail outlets and lay off 2,250 workers as cost cutting measures, the company announced yesterday.
At the same time Gateway reported that it returned to profitability by showing a $5.1 million net profit for the fourth quarter on sales of $1.14 billion. During the 2000 fourth quarter the company lost $128 million on sales of $2.45 billion. However, for all of 2001 the news was not positive. Gateway suffered a $1 billion loss on $6.1 billion in sales, compared to the $155.2 million profit and $9.6 billion in sales generated in 2000. The vendor/retailer shipped 3.6 million computers during the year, a 28 percent decline from the previous year.
The quarter’s profit fulfilled Gateway CEO’s Ted Waitt’s promise of returning to profitability by the end of the year.
Gateway did not announce which stores would be closed. Yesterday’s cutbacks follow the company’s elimination of 5,000 jobs, the closing of 27 stores and the pullout from several international markets last year.
