Spokesperson for the embattled company, Ron Nissen, said today that it was in discussions with its sales management team over plans to split-out its sales operation into an independent vendor channel.
Nissen said NTG would effectively become a wholesale business providing equipment, software, service and support bundles to the channel and extinguishing its links with capital financing companies.
NTG revealed the plan after delivering more bad news to investors today. The company's directors had agreed in-principle to the restructure after revising its earnings forecast downward for the second time in the past two months. It downgraded its November forecast from a profit of AU$7.6 million to a loss after tax of AU$15 million. The company's directors said it would need to undertake a radical restructure in order to return to profitability.
The company also said it would need to delay until the restructure was complete a rights issue - designed to raise AU$13.4 million from the market - that it announced in early January.
Nissen said the company had not finalised its post-restructure headcount prior to making the announcement and had not spoken to employees individually about its plans.
"It would be up to the managers of those businesses to determine what the staffing levels they require in those businesses," said Nissen. "If there were any redundancies as a result of that then clearly that would be on NTGs account; we'd have to take that on and pay that out".
According to Nissen, NTG chose to make the announcement before talking to its staff in as it was keen not to put a foot wrong with the market.
"Right at the moment you would have to say that the board of NTG is perhaps being super-diligent in terms of discharging its responsibility for continuous disclosure," said Nissen.
Industry analysts believe key finance partners have had one foot out the door ever since scrutiny of the company's sales operation from media and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) intensified throughout the latter half of 2002.
The ACCC announced Thursday that it had commenced legal proceedings against NTG in the Federal Court following a lengthy investigation into the company's sales activities.
The regulator alleged that NTG's sales operation breached sections of the Trade Practices Act 1974, misleading customers over call tariffs and charges associated with equipment lease packages.
NTG said it customer satisfaction survey -- carried out in the wake of the scrutiny -- had only uncovered a handful of dissatisfied customers.
It is understood BankWest has suspended its partnership with the group pending an audit. BankWest was keeping the results of that audit under wraps last month and failed to return ZDNet Australia's requests for comment on the matter today.
NTG claims BankWest's audit is "ongoing" and that it was still in discussion with both it and the company's other key financier, Society Generale over its plans going forward.
However Nissen conceded that the company had approached a third finance company.
