Staff and agencies

One-fifth of staff at the internet retailer Letsbuyit.com are to be shed in an effort to streamline costs, despite an 82% surge in sales this quarter.

The UK-based retailer today announced 80 job losses from its 400-strong staff, mainly from the ranks of temporary staff and advisers.

Letsbuyit, which pools together customers to bargain for lower prices from manufacturers of consumer goods, will remain heavily loss-making until 2003, according to analysts.

The e-commerce company's second-quarter sales have jumped to £4.4m, with its gross margin rising to 9.8% from 2.9%.

The reorganisation will centralise Letsbuyit's European procurement, logistics and marketing activities and lead to one-off costs totalling £920,000 in the third quarter.

Traders are cautious about the second-quarter sales rise. "It's basically a base effect - in general an investment in Letsbuyit remains a high-risk one because they've said they'll break even relatively far in the future," said Edward Martens, a trader at MM Warburg in Hamburg.

Letsbuyit stock has tumbled 40% from its peak in July as technology investors worldwide preferred software and internet infrastructure companies over loss-making e-commerce enterprises.