Baltimore Technologies' share price fell a further 30 per cent yesterday after the group announced it was undertaking a major restructuring programme following a global operational review.

Analysts have said that, without radical remedial action, Baltimore's cash reserves will be exhausted by Christmas.

"They have £54 million sterling [€90 million] in cash and they are burning about £25 million a quarter so it doesn't take a great mathematician to work out that in two quarters they will have run out of funds," ABN Amro technology analyst Ms Jemma Houlihan said. "We believe they will have to raise money towards the end of this year."

Yesterday's announcement did little to boost confidence in the company as chief executive Mr Fran Rooney refused to be drawn on numbers regarding future job cuts within the 1,400strong company.

Baltimore announced in May that it was cutting 250 jobs and Mr Rooney said yesterday this had already been completed. About 45 of that number came from the Republic, some of whom were contract workers.

"They [Baltimore] have lost investors' confidence completely. They are down 94 per cent since January," said Merrion stockbrokers analyst Mr John Coolican. "We pressed them for details and they were not forthcoming, and that tells me their management are not in touch with the market."

More than 23 million shares traded by mid-morning yesterday and the share price dropped to a new low of 17p on the London Stock Exchange.

A separate statement announcing a deal with Finland's mobile services operator Radiolinja, which licensed Baltimore Telepathy to build and deploy a security infrastructure, did little to stem the share price slide.

Mr Rooney said the deal was well in excess of its average public key infrastructure deal of $500,000 (€597,400) but could not give exact figures as the customer did not want them disclosed.

He said the company had made annualised cost savings of £14 million from the job cuts and the benefits of this should be seen from July 1st.

Ms Houlihan said: "They have already cut back head count and trimmed expenses, and that didn't work. Now they are going to do it again."

Recent cost savings would not come into August's figures and the only alternative left is to try to raise funds.

"It is a vicious circle," Ms Houlihan said. "Customers may start looking for cash discounts and they may start looking for longer payment terms and extended credit, which will further undermine the company."

However, raising equity in the current market environment will be difficult.

The third possibility is a trade sale but any potential predator would be inclined to wait at least until August when Baltimore's second-quarter figures are due out, if not longer.

Baltimore has dual listings in London and on Nasdaq. The company's share price dropped below $1 in the US 10 days ago and, by Nasdaq rules, if it does not come back up above $1 within 30 days it risks losing its listing.

"The process in Nasdaq is very complex and they will write to us and inform us that our share price has been down for 30 days and then we have 90 days to rectify it," Mr Rooney said. "So we have another three months to react to that and there are lots of different things we can do - we can consolidate our stock back up."

He said the share price was where it was because of the group's share split and that could be reversed.

"But we really don't want to comment on the share price. Our objective now is to build investor confidence. We know tough action has to be taken and we will take it. We will make those tough decisions."

He said the group knew how much cash it had and he was now going to manage the company within those cash resources.