Lexmark announced that the Lexington-based company "continued to be negatively impacted by the challenging economic environment in the second quarter of 2008."
Kentucky's Herald-Leader wrote of Lexmark's inkjet division, "Since late 2005, that division has struggled as consumers bought printers, which often are sold at a loss, but failed to purchase enough ink cartridges over time to meet Lexmark's profit expectations. The company withdrew from 20 percent of its inkjet sales in 2006 and then announced last October that it would drop another 30 percent of sales in hopesof finding the most profitable customers. Along with those announcements were restructurings that closed plants, eliminated employees and transferred thousands of jobs to lower-wage countries.
Industry analyst Tom Carpenter of Hilliard Lyons said, "Can inkjet survive when you're walking away from30 to 40 percent of your business? After a while, that's going to catch up to you."
In a separate announcement, Lexmark stated it plans to further consolidate manufacturing capacity for the company's inkjet supplies. This restructuring plan is for the closure of one of Lexmark's inkjet supplies manufacturing facilities in Mexico.
