WEBSTER, N.Y. -- Xerox officially announced Friday morning it will split. The company made the announcement when it released its fourth quarter revenues of $4.7 billion, an eight percent drop from the same quarter last year.

The company will split into two independent, publicly traded companies: one to house Xerox's hardware operations and the other its services business.

The company that would come to be known as Xerox was founded 100 years ago in Rochester. Now it has more than 140,000 employees in more than 180 countries, but in Rochester, the name holds a lot of meaning.

"Drive by Xerox when they're working, you'll find the parking lots are maybe 20 percent full," said Dave Coriale, who began working for Xerox in 1963, and retired 36 years later. "It was a great company to be in, did a lot of great things."

Coriale, the head of the Association of Retired Xerox Workers, said the writing has been on the wall.

"It was inevitible.  The company has not been doing well."

Coriale received the same letter current Xerox workers received, explaining that the moves are expected to result in $2.4 billion in savings.

"It's just a shame, and the way they treated retirees is just abysmal."

In 2006, Xerox retirees unsuccessfully sued the company over pension and other benefit cuts.

"I can only imagine that further reduction in the few retiree benefits that are left are on the table."

Xerox employs 6,400 people in the Rochester area.  CEO Ursula Burns told Bloomberg to expect cuts of between one to two percent.  

"If I were Xerox, I'd be concerned for my job," said analyst George Conboy. He doesn't expect job cuts, at least immediately.

"Over the course of the next few years, I would be concerned, because Xerox has been cutting jobs in Webster for years," Conboy said. "With that company broken away from the services side, you can expect them to want to take more cost out of their system. and a lot of those costs are personnel."

"It was a good company," Coriale said. "I dare say if you were to talk to current employees they wouldn't view it the same way."

Xerox isn't the first local employer to fall on hard times, or to change the way it does business, but for those who helped build the company, the news still hurts.

"You can only squeeze so much out of what you have. Don't understand it."