Allergan hits its already battered Irvine site with another round of job cuts

More than 100 layoffs are on the way at Allergan.

The company earlier this month filed a WARN notice with state of California, saying it would dismiss 109 employees at its ex-headquarters in Irvine. The notice is effective Oct. 23.

The jobs getting the axe are "R&D positions associated with R&D pipeline prioritization decisions," a company spokesman said in an emailed statement, and the decision will provide "opportunities to gain additional efficiencies in our organizational structure," too.

Layoffs are nothing new for the Irvine campus, which was hit hard in 2014 and 2015 before and after the company—then known as Actavis—snatched Allergan for $70.5 billion from Valeant’s hostile clutches. In an effort to evade its unwanted suitor, Allergan pledged 1,500 cuts to boost margins, and 500 of those came to pass before Actavis took the reins.

The company then plotted another 577 dismissals as it integrated operations, part of a broader $1.8 billion cost-squeezing plan. When all was said and done, reports put Irvine’s worker tally at just 2,100—down from more than 3,000 before layoffs began.

Meanwhile, Allergan has since doubled down on its U.S. base across the country. Last summer, the company announced that it would be consolidating four New Jersey locations into one larger campus in Madison, New Jersey. And thanks in part to a promise to add 300 more jobs and its decision to keep more than 1,000 jobs in the state, the pharma won $58 million in state incentives for the project.

Allergan plans to move into that site by the end of this year after taking some time to revamp it.