Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Patrick Archambault – Goldman Sachs.
Patrick Archambault – Goldman Sachs
Just wanted to get a little bit of a sense, can you kind of spell out what the cadence of the benefits related to the $160 million in restructuring actions that are part of the program, and how you expect those to sort of play out over the coming quarters.
Jose Maria Alapont
As you know, we were on the third quarter reporting record sales, but at the same time in September, we put in place a restructuring plan and then we developed in the fourth quarter that will take us to invest $160 million out of which we have booked $118 million for the fourth quarter, $132 million in total for the year and in our strategy we are going to restructure the company and we have done already an important part of it.
We're estimating that in this plan that we call variable cost company, we will be capable to adjust the cost to the new market situation and from July 1, 2008 to the end of 2009 this year, we estimate a total reduction of 26%.
Together with the head count, we are taking other fundamental actions that we see that coming from the strength of the performance on the quarter and the year, that is the fact that we are merging five business units into four, and as well, that we are on applying strategy for flexing all our manufacturing capacity across with flexible working days during the week, also, by eliminating the premium shifts and as well restructuring the shift pattern.
All this is a package, and as I said, in the fourth quarter we managed to reduce the operating cost by 23% and in terms of the reduction, you saw that first of January 2008, we had 50,000 employees, we ended the year with 43,000.
Patrick Archambault – Goldman Sachs
So it's basically extending forward that 23% cost reduction into subsequent quarters and by the time you get to the fourth, obviously it's going to be a little bit less because you've taken a good part.
One quick housekeeping one, you saw your cash increase by about $100 million over the previous quarter, but I noticed your available liquidity number, you still put it at $1.3 million. Are there any letters of credit or anything like that that made you not increase the liquidity?
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