Intershop slashes targets

Economic weakness and falling sales give way to grim forecast...

German ecommerce software group Intershop announced it missed third quarter revenue targets and slashed its targets for the second half of the financial year. In a statement Intershop said: "Continued global macroeconomic weakness and low corporate spending on IT has caused Intershop to revise its revenue forecast for 2001 to approximately E80m (£49m)." The company has cut jobs by 25 per cent - down to 790 employees, in order to break even for the fourth quarter before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) are taken into account. The job losses gave Intershop one-time costs of E22m (£13m) for the third quarter. As a result of the restructuring program, Intershop expects its cash spend to decline in the fourth quarter. The company's liquidity stood at E43m at the end of the quarter. Full financial results for the third quarter of 2001 will be reported on 31 October.