Arkansas Business

CARTI of Little Rock eliminated 22 positions on Thursday, including 17 that were occupied.

The move was part of CARTI’s restructuring process aimed at making the cancer treatment nonprofit “strong and sustainable … going forward in the future,” CARTI CEO Adam Head told Arkansas Business on Thursday.

Head said six of the employees who lost their job worked directly with Dr. Brad Baltz, the oncologist who was fired last month.

Eliminating the positions is expected to save CARTI $1.4 million annually, starting in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Head also said CARTI expects to have enough cash to meet its bond covenant when the fiscal year ends June 30.

CARTI is about $2 million ahead of where it was at the end of March 2017, when it reported an operating loss before depreciation of $3.3 million.

“Four out of the last five months, we have been operationally positive,” said Head, who succeeded Jan Burford as CEO in September.

Through the first half of this fiscal year, CARTI, with about 400 employees, had $90.8 million in revenue and an operating loss before depreciation of $1.5 million. During the same period in the prior year, CARTI had $80.4 million in revenue and an operating loss before depreciation of $2.7 million.

In 2016, CARTI failed to maintain a required debt service ratio on the $49 million bond issue that was used to build CARTI’s four-story Little Rock Center, a failure that triggered the hiring of management consultant Berkeley Research Group of Emeryville, California.

BRG in May released its strategy to slash costs and said one of the biggest cuts in expenses would come from a restructuring of CARTI’s workforce. Head said Thursday that BRG's work with CARTI ended several months ago.