Mattel To Cut More Than 2,200 Jobs

(RTTNews) - Mattel Inc. (MAT) announced a reduction of over 2,200 positions, representing 22% of global non-manufacturing workforce, as well as planned sale of manufacturing sites in Mexico.

The company said it is on track to deliver $650 million savings, reflecting progress in Structural Simplification program to restore profitability and improve efficiency.

"While the industry is evolving, the toy market continues to grow, and we should be able to reverse our own trends given our strong standing and the quality of our assets. With that said, we are in a turnaround and as expected, had a challenging second quarter driven primarily by the Toys "R" Us liquidation. At the same time, we saw continued strong performance by Barbie and Hot Wheels, and we made substantial progress on our Structural Simplification program to restore profitability and improve productivity in the near-term," said Ynon Kreiz, Chairman and CEO of Mattel.

Joseph Euteneuer, CFO of Mattel said,"We are pleased to report that our two-year $650 million Structural Simplification program is on-track. We are ahead of schedule with our SG&A savings actions and, as a result, expect full year adjusted SG&A to be better than the outlook we provided earlier this year. While gross margin was challenged in the first half, we expect a significant sequential improvement in gross margin in the second half of the year."