Shares of Santa Ana’s TTM Technologies Inc., a maker of printed circuit boards, rose Friday after it said it’s set to close a plant in Washington and slash roughly 500 jobs companywide.
The stock rose almost 5% on a recent market value of $240 million.
TTM is set to halt production at its Redmond plant during the first quarter due to “weakened demand for commercial printed circuit boards.”
Some of the factory equipment will be sent to TTM’s other sites in California, Connecticut, Utah and Wisconsin.
The company plans to sell the Redmond site and other machinery, it said in a statement.
The move is set to “improve utilization at our remaining facilities, reduce our cost structure and lower future capital expenditures as we relocate some of the equipment from Redmond to our other operations,” said Chief Executive Kent Alder.
Some 375 workers at the Redmond site face job cuts. Another 140 workers from TTM’s other locations will also face layoffs.
TTM didn’t say how the layoff would affect local workers in Santa Ana. In November, the company told the Business Journal it had more than 400 workers here.
The combined layoff makes up about 14% of TTM’s total workers, the company said.
The move is expected to save $20 million to $25 million a year.
In the same announcement, TTM also reiterated its outlook for the fourth quarter, which is in-line with analysts’ expectations.
The company said it expects to report sales of $156 million to $164 million.
Before charges for write-downs on assets and other costs, TTM is looking for profits of $6 million to $8 million.
Wall Street analysts, on average, are looking for profits of $6 million on revenue of $158 million.
TTM has 11 factories, most of which are in the U.S.
In Santa Ana, the company does more complex work for customers in aerospace, networking and industrial computing.
Locally made TTM circuit boards go into industrial routers and switches made by one of its biggest networking customers, Cisco Systems Inc.
Until recently, the company hadn’t been dinged by the larger economic woes.
Last year it saw a fairly steady supply of contracts from large aerospace and defense suppliers, including a $15 million one to make and assemble specialized circuit boards for Britain’s BAE Systems PLC.
TTM is set to report fourth quarter results on Feb. 9. Its shares are off some 30% in the past 12 months.
