Starbucks Corp. said nearly 7,000 employees may lose their jobs because of a new round of store closures and cost cuts as it reported Wednesday that its profit dropped 69 percent in its fiscal first quarter.

The company plans to close 300 underperforming stores around the world by the end of the fiscal year in addition to the 600 it already planned to close in the United States. The company has already closed 384 of those stores.

In a company statement, Starbucks officials said Kansas stores will be affected, but they did not release any specific details “about numbers of or locations of stores that will be impacted by these announcements.”

Employees Wednesday afternoon at the downtown Lawrence Starbucks, 647 Mass., said they had heard nothing about the store possibly closing. The coffee giant also has locations at two Dillons stores and in the Target Store, 3201 Iowa.

The company said additional closures could result in the loss of 6,000 in-store jobs. Starbucks also plans to lay off about 700 nonstore employees. It also has reduced the number of new stores it plans to open.

The cuts and changes will result in about $500 million in savings in fiscal 2009, the company said.