Giant drug distributor AmerisourceBergen laid off 450 people this week
The Conshohocken company said the layoff amounted to less than 1% of its workforce.
AmerisourceBergen Corp., a giant drug distributor based in Conshohocken, this week laid off 450 U.S. employees, less than 1% of its workforce of more than 45,000.
The layoffs were part of an effort to align “our capabilities to our customers’ needs and creating an efficient organizational structure that can meet the needs of our business in the future,” the company said in a statement Friday.
The company’s financial reports show that job cuts were not because of financial distress.
For its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, AmerisourceBergen reported revenue of $238.6 billion and net income of $1.7 billion, both solid increases from the year before. The company operates in 50 countries, but most of its revenue comes from the U.S.
AmerisourceBergen’s profits are slim in percentage terms, but generate “gloriously steady free cash flow and recession-resistant earnings,” credit analyst Carol Levenson said in a report published Friday by Gimme Credit LLC, a Chicago firm that rates corporate debt.
Levenson noted that AmerisourceBergen paid down $1 billion in debt in the last year and recently paid $1.4 billion in cash for PharmaLex, a German firm that helps pharmaceutical companies bring drugs to market.
Last year, AmerisourceBergen, which is changing its name this year to Cencora, was among the three major U.S. drug distributors to agree to a $19.5 billion settlement with the Justice Department for its role in distributing opioid painkillers that regulators and law enforcement officials have said contributed to a rapid increase in addiction and drug abuse deaths.
AmerisourceBergen’s share was $6.1 billion, to be paid over 18 years. The other distributors in the settlement are Cardinal Health and McKesson.
People who identified themselves as former AmerisourceBergen employees lamented the layoffs at TheLayoff.com, an online message board about corporate job cuts.
“I thought we are doing amazing and knocking it out of park. Do we really need these layoffs or are we just following everyone else who is laying off today,” one of the anonymous commenters asked.