Nice piece on SOC form Briefing.com
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STOCKS TO WATCH
12:36 ET ******
Sunbeam Corp. (SOC) 5 +9/16: This consumer products company announced organizational changes today in an effort to complete its strategy to streamline and decentralize its structure. The idea behind the changes is to build stronger individual and team performances that will allow Sunbeam to be "better focus on consumers and product offerings in the marketplace." At the same time, Sunbeam plans to enter the smart appliances market by unveiling nine products later this year that will work together to deliver convenience, performance and safety throughout the house. With Sunbeam, this is a radical departure from past practices, particularly building team cohesion in order to meet challenges in the marketplace. In the past, especially when former CEO Chain Saw Al" Dunlap ruled the roost, there was no such thing as team unity. Instead, it was team cohesionless that was fostered by a spirit of everyone for himself as Mr. Dunlap accompanied every restructuring plan with buckets full of job reductions and plenty of charges associated with the "slash and burn" policy of his reign. While initially, such policies lit a fire under the stock and allow the shares to climb as high as 51 1/2 in the early part of 1998, eventually, investors lost patience and confidence is this type of management philosophy, especially when "slash at any cost" policies did not lead to long lasting results. With the planned introduction of the smart appliance whole-house approach, Sunbeam is going after a new market that has already attracted the attention of other well know consumer products retailers, including Microsoft and General Electric. While it is too early to tell whether this new market will bear fruit, Sunbeam certainly has the household products and brand names that could easily invigorate its product offerings. The stock is currently far away (90% below) from the highs reached in 1998, but you can bet that with a group of well recognizable product names, it is only a matter of time before Sunbeam starts to be taken seriously again. It certainly hasn't been the same since "Chain Saw Al" departed the scene It has just taken a long time to clean-up his mess. RN |
