Dark glasses? Pretty much. I was part of the team that brought the company from $95M or so to $160M. That was the high point for the company, and it has gone downhill steadily since.
I've seen a number of restructurings, in which several of my good friends, all strong contributors to the company, were let go. Exar used to have a very, very strong consumer products group, with strong sales in Japan. Gone. Exar used to have a hard drive group - gone. Modems? Gone. It can be called "focusing more narrowly", but it appears to me that Exar has made some serious blunders which caused them to lose out on markets - key markets. Saying you are focusing is a much better sounding excuse for finding yourself out of business in a particular market. Also - one needs to understand the timing. Most of the "focusing" activities happen long after the handwriting is on the wall.
As far as the management team being new - I still say it isn't. I won't name names here, but if you grab an annual report from, say, 2 years ago and compare it to today, you will see very, very little change. It's still substantially the same group of people. |
