SiliconBeat

Aviza Technology says it plans to lay off 15 percent of its staff in a restructuring that it hopes will save it $15 million to $20 million a year, according to a regulatory filing. Based on the company’s employment level at the end of its last fiscal year, that would amount to 100 lost jobs.

The Scotts Valley supplier of chip-making equipment has decided to throw in the towel on making products used by makers of dynamic random-access memory chips. DRAM prices plunged 60 percent in February, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. Analysts wrote in reports this month that DRAM prices may not rebound until the second half of this year, while Goldman, Sachs & Co. said in March that prices are unlikely to recover throughout 2008 because of oversupply, according to a post at purchasing.com.

Aviza also pushed its earnings expectations to the low end of its previous guidance, which had been for sales in the March quarter to be between $30 million to $35 million, down from $61.6 million in the year-before quarter. It had pegged its operating loss to be between $7 million to $8 million.

Aviza says it expects additional saving when it vacates its current location in Scotts Valley, which it agreed to sell last month for $13 million, and relocates to ”a more appropriately sized facility in Santa Clara County.”

The company also revealed it has gotten a letter from Nasdaq warning that Aviza risked having its stock delisted as its price has fallen below the minimum $1 a share, according to a separate filing Thursday. The company has 180 days to regain compliance.