Impressions of the Annual Meeting:
Negatives:
• Stan struck me as tired. The tone of true inspiration I heard in his 1998 presentation was not present for me. His talk lacked a certain coherency. It wasn't a "random" set of remarks, but the primary focus on his management "dream team" lacked a certain je ne sais quoi.
• Tyler mentioned the war time uses of ECD/Ovonyx (how long will this name last) technologies several times while Bob closed with the admonition that war isn't good for the economy or ECD. I think it's challenging to wed an environmental compamy with a defense contractor.
• Short term problems are definitely showing up with Gold Peak, one of ECD's primary battery customers. They are, I believe, right now making their own lower grade materials from mis-metals rather than using ECD product. ECD is not at all sure that they are going to be able to get this business back.
• Why can't they just show us a list of who's paying what in royalties and what they project those numbers to look like at close of business 1999?
• The plant has a lot of unautomated operations which look very expensive. One of the managers spoke of his learnings from the book The Goal (an excellent manufacturing novel), including the problems associated with conveyor belts. This is not what I'm referring to here. It looked to me like there is a lot of lugging of materials from one spot to another in the same work area that is unnecessary and costly. Perhaps this is the sort of thing jacq was referring to in an earlier post.
• They're making battery packs, but it's not clear to me that they know where these paks are going. They have a couple of hundred S-10 assembly casings there, but the S-10 will get only 50 miles/charge. How many of these are actually going to sell?
• GM's name hardly came up at all. Contrast that with 1998 when their video of various electric/hybrid/fuel cell cars was the virtual center piece of the meeting. From time to time, I remember how much I've hated GM for the last thirty years.
• While I liked the new Battery Sales Director, he's very short staffed with a very large job.
Positives:
• Ken Baker was absolutely terrific on video. I don't know how much of that was scripted but it was a boffo media performance as far as I'm concerned. Not a single non-fluency (uh, umm, cough, etc.) in the whole ten minutes.
• Tyler Lowrey, as noted, impresses. He really seemed to warm up to the talk after the first couple of minutes. He's very energetic and competitive. He was also very accessible and down-to-earth one-on-one. Good listener and learner. A terrific addition to the team that's working for us.
• Nancy Bacon was super. She was the first ECD exec I noticed at the continental breakfast prior to the meeting. She was warm, very forthright and a terrific spokeswoman for the company. At one point she was surrounded by maybe ten male shareholders peppering her with tough and pointed questions, and it looked to me like she was having a great time of it.
• Joichi Ito, a 33 y.o. board member and ECD's Japanese liaison is also great. He is totally hip with Internet/Information Age developments in Japan. His history with the company goes back through his parents long association with ECD as scientists. This is an amazing asset.
• The professional staff at GMOvonic are terrific. I spent about 30 minutes with Matt ???. This guy could work in virtually any manufacturing enviroment.
• Stempel, to me, is a very impressive guy. Again, no hype and plenty of depth.
• Bottom line, I think that Stan is right to call this group (which includes other I don't know or haven't mentioned) as a management "dream team". So, while I wasn't crazy about the way he spoke of it, these group is a tremendous asset.
• The play the Starter, Lighter, Ignition (SLI) business received throughout the meeting was very encouraging. Seems like a natural and easy way to reconfigure what we're already doing without having to start a new business.
• The Ricoh licensing demonstrates the power of ECD's patent protection.
BOTTOM BOTTOM LINE: GOOD MEETING. MORE REALISM THAN HOPE. STAN HAS APPARENTLY RESOLVED THE SUCCESSSION ISSUE, BUT THOSE WHO FOLLOW HIM WILL NOT OPERATE AT HIS SAME LEVEL OF VISION AND INSPIRATION. |
