SPH to cut jobs amidst higher profits

It intends to reduce its staff count by 10% next year.

Despite higher profits, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) announced on its results day that it intends to reduce its staff count by 10% in the coming year.

According to DBS Equity Research, the last time SPH announced a staff cut was in October 2016 when it intended to reduce up to 10% of its workforce over two years through attrition, retirement, non-renewal of contracts, outplacement, and retrenchment.

Its staff count in August 2016 was 4,182 and there were 4,410 staff on the payroll as of August 2017.

Whilst it did reduce staff from its core operations, it added 457 staff from the recent acquisition of Orange Valley.

"We estimate that once this exercise is completed, earnings could improve by 5% - 11% for FY18F/19F as we could have been too aggressive in our cost assumptions previously," DBS said.