Milford's Waters Corp Cuts Staff

Reprinted from Milford Patch

Neal McNamara,Patch Staff

MILFORD, MA — The Milford-based laboratory equipment and software company Waters Corp. began the process this week of cutting about 4 percent of its global workforce, the company confirmed Thursday.

Waters, whose corporate campus is located along Maple Street, is planning to cut about 328 jobs worldwide, including a "small percentage" of employees in Milford and other Massachusetts offices. The company notified local employees of the layoffs over the last few days.

"To ensure that we continue to invest in higher growth areas and position Waters for success, we are making some very difficult but necessary decisions to better align our headcount and outside services spending with our growth strategy," the company said in a statement to Milford Patch. "Looking forward, Waters will continue to invest in innovation, talent development, and capability-building. We will also continue to prioritize investments in our growth areas in order to deliver on the substantial opportunity we have ahead of us."

The job cuts come weeks before Waters is set to announced its second quarter earnings on Aug. 2. The company reported some revenue declines in the first quarter tied to a slowdown in pharmaceutical industry spending. The company's stock has also been down over the past year, trading at about $269 Thursday compared to a one-year peak 52-week peak of $366.

"While the first quarter came in below our expectations, our results reflect a healthy two-year stacked growth rate of 9.4%, and our end-markets are resilient," CEO Dr. Udit Batra said in a news release.

Waters was founded in the 1950s in Framingham, and moved to Milford in 1973. The company has offices in Taunton and abroad in Ireland and the United Kingdom. The company has about 8,200 workers across the globe.