Novell Inc. who reported earlier in the summer their losses have reported on Tuesday a net loss of $35 million for their fourth quarter that ended 31 October.

These losses reflect the problems that Novell have been facing this year due to declining sales in their networking software and other products. The losses also include a $47.9 million restructuring charge that the company took earlier in the year to pay for a 16% reduction in workforce they took two years ago.

Novell stated that if they would not have had this restructuring charge they would have broken even in the fourth quarter, however the company said that revenue fell from $344.6 million to just $273.3 million, net income of around $49.5 million, down from $190.7 million during the previous year.

Novell's chairman, Eric Schmidt, stated that they are into a six month transformation where Novell have created four new business units in an attempt to reduce reliance on sales and to make a move to focus more on internet-based services.

The sale of their packaged software has declined by 47% during 2000 and has accounted for less than a quarter of the company's total revenue. Sales of their Netware software has dropped by 24%.