Lucent Technologies has moved to reassure investors and staff that it is on the road to recovery.

The company, which employs about 1,300 people at several sites in Wiltshire, including five in Swindon, says that while losses for the first quarter of 2002 are likely to be bigger than forecast, it still expects improvement later in the year.

This would be as a result of its restructure programme and 30,000 job cuts globally during the year taking effect, and improvement in the economic climate in the telecoms industry.

In October the company confirmed that more than 500 of its 2,500 workforce in the UK were to be cut as part of its 20,000 worldwide staff downsizing, which was announced in July.

These were on top of a global reduction of about 10,000 announced at the start of the year.

At the time it was understood that the cuts, which were across the board, would affect some of the more than 750 staff employed at its sites in Swindon, where it has its European headquarters on the Windmill Hill Business Park, as well another 750 at its Chippenham and Malmesbury sites.

Lucent now expects revenues for the first fiscal quarter to be in the range of $3.1 billion to $3.4 billion.

This compares with $4.8 billion in revenues recorded in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2001.

The company said that this reflected what it believed was an industry-wide reduction in spending for network infrastructure and related services.

However, it believed projected revenues for the first quarter would represent the low point for Lucent sales in the current market downturn.

Lucent Technologies designs and delivers networks for the world's largest communications service providers.

Backed by Bell Labs research and development, Lucent relies on its strengths in mobility, optical, data and voice networking technologies as well as software and services to develop next-generation networks.