by Adam Hartung | May 15, 2016 | In the Swamp, Investing, real estate, Retail
Last week Sears announced sales and earnings. And once again, the news was all bad. The stock closed at a record, all time low. One chart pretty much sums up the story, as investors are now realizing bankruptcy is the most likely outcome.
Chart Source: Yahoo Finance 5/13/16
Quick Rundown: In January, 2002 Kmart is headed for bankruptcy. Ed Lampert, CEO of hedge fund ESL, starts buying the bonds. He takes control of the company, makes himself Chairman, and rapidly moves through proceedings. On May 1, 2003, KMart begins trading again. The shares trade for just under $15 (for this column all prices are adjusted for any equity transactions, as reflected in the chart.)
Lampert quickly starts hacking away costs and closing stores. Revenues tumble, but so do costs, and earnings rise. By November, 2004 the stock has risen to $90. Lampert owns 53% of Kmart, and 15% of Sears. Lampert hires a new CEO for Kmart, and quickly announces his intention to buy all of slow growing, financially troubled Sears.
In March, 2005 Sears shareholders approve the deal. The stock trades for $126. Analysts praise the deal, saying Lampert has “the Midas touch” for cutting costs. Pumped by most analysts, and none moreso than Jim Cramer of “Mad Money” fame (Lampert’s former roommate,) in 2 years the stock soars to $178 by April, 2007. So far Lampert has done nothing to create value but relentlessly cut costs via massive layoffs, big inventory reductions, delayed payments to suppliers and store closures.
Homebuilding falls off a cliff as real estate values tumble, and the Great Recession begins. Retailers are creamed by investors, and appliance sales dependent Sears crashes to $33.76 in 18 months. On hopes that a recovering economy will raise all boats, the stock recovers over the next 18 months to $113 by April, 2010. But sales per store keep declining, even as the number of stores shrinks. Revenues fall faster than costs, and the stock falls to $43.73 by January, 2013 when Lampert appoints himself CEO. In just under 2.5 years with Lampert as CEO and Chairman the company’s sales keep falling, more stores are closed or sold, and the stock finds an all-time low of $11.13 – 25% lower than when Lampert took KMart public almost exactly 13 years ago – and 94% off its highs.
What happened?
Sears became a retailing juggernaut via innovation. When general stores were small and often far between, and stocking inventory was precious, Sears invented mail order catalogues. Over time almost every home in America was receiving 1, or several, catalogues every year. They were a major source of purchases, especially by people living in non-urban communities. Then Sears realized it could open massive stores to sell all those things in its catalogue, and the company pioneered very large, well stocked stores where customers could buy everything from clothes to tools to appliances to guns. As malls came along, Sears was again a pioneer “anchoring” many malls and obtaining lower cost space due to the company’s ability to draw in customers for other retailers.
To help customers buy more Sears created customer installment loans. If a young couple couldn’t afford a stove for their new home they could buy it on terms, paying $10 or $15 a month, long before credit cards existed. The more people bought on their revolving credit line, and the more they paid Sears, the more Sears increased their credit limit. Sears was the “go to” place for cash strapped consumers. (Eventually, this became what we now call the Discover card.)
In 1930 Sears expanded the Allstate tire line to include selling auto insurance – and consumers could not only maintain their car at Sears they could insure it as well. As its customers grew older and more wealthy, many needed help with financia advice so in 1981 Sears bought Dean Witter and made it possible for customers to figure out a retirement plan while waiting for their tires to be replaced and their car insurance to update.
To put it mildly, Sears was the most innovative retailer of all time. Until the internet came along. Focused on its big stores, and its breadth of products and services, Sears kept trying to sell more stuff through those stores, and to those same customers. Internet retailing seemed insignificantly small, and unappealing. Heck, leadership had discontinued the famous catalogues in 1993 to stop store cannibalization and push people into locations where the company could promote more products and services. Focusing on its core customers shopping in its core retail locations, Sears leadership simply ignored upstarts like Amazon.com and figured its old success formula would last forever.
But they were wrong. The traditional Sears market was niched up across big box retailers like Best Buy, clothiers like Kohls, tool stores like Home Depot, parts retailers like AutoZone, and soft goods stores like Bed, Bath & Beyond. The original need for “one stop shopping” had been overtaken by specialty retailers with wider selection, and often better pricing. And customers now had credit cards that worked in all stores. Meanwhile, for those who wanted to shop for many things from home the internet had taken over where the catalogue once began. Leaving Sears’ market “hollowed out.” While KMart was simply overwhelmed by the vast expansion of WalMart.
What should Lampert have done?
There was no way a cost cutting strategy would save KMart or Sears. All the trends were going against the company. Sears was destined to keep losing customers, and sales, unless it moved onto trends. Lampert needed to innovate. He needed to rapidly adopt the trends. Instead, he kept cutting costs. But revenues fell even faster, and the result was huge paper losses and an outpouring of cash.
To gain more insight, take a look at Jeff Bezos. But rather than harp on Amazon.com’s growth, look instead at the leadership he has provided to The Washington Post since acquiring it just over 2 years ago. Mr. Bezos did not try to be a better newspaper operator. He didn’t involve himself in editorial decisions. Nor did he focus on how to drive more subscriptions, or sell more advertising to traditional customers. None of those initiatives had helped any newspaper the last decade, and they wouldn’t help The Washington Post to become a more relevant, viable and profitable company. Newspapers are a dying business, and Bezos could not change that fact.
Mr. Bezos focused on trends, and what was needed to make The Washington Post grow. Media is under change, and that change is being created by technology. Streaming content, live content, user generated content, 24×7 content posting (vs. deadlines,) user response tracking, readers interactivity, social media connectivity, mobile access and mobile content — these are the trends impacting media today. So that was where he had leadership focus. The Washington Post had to transition from a “newspaper” company to a “media and technology company.”
So Mr. Bezos pushed for hiring more engineers – a lot more engineers – to build apps and tools for readers to interact with the company. And the use of modern media tools like headline testing. As a result, in October, 2015 The Washington Post had more unique web visitors than the vaunted New York Times. And its lead is growing. And while other newspapers are cutting staff, or going out of business, the Post is adding writers, editors and engineers. In a declining newspaper market The Washington Post is growing because it is using trends to transform itself into a company readers (and advertisers) value.
CEO Lampert could have chosen to transform Sears Holdings. But he did not. He became a very, very active “hands on” manager. He micro-managed costs, with no sense of important trends in retail. He kept trying to take cash out, when he needed to invest in transformation. He should have sold the real estate very early, sensing that retail was moving on-line. He should have sold outdated brands under intense competitive pressure, such as Kenmore, to a segment supplier like Best Buy. He then should have invested that money in technology. Sears should have been a leader in shopping apps, supplier storefronts, and direct-to-customer distribution. Focused entirely on defending Sears’ core, Lampert missed the market shift and destroyed all the value which initially existed in the great retail merger he created.
Impact?
Every company must understand critical trends, and how they will apply to their business. Nobody can hope to succeed by just protecting the core business, as it can be made obsolete very, very quickly. And nobody can hope to change a trend. It is more important than ever that organizations spend far less time focused on what they did, and spend a lot more time thinking about what they need to do next. Planning needs to shift from deep numerical analysis of the past, and a lot more in-depth discussion about technology trends and how they will impact their business in the next 1, 3 and 5 years.
Sears Holdings was a 13 year ride. Investor hope that Lampert could cut costs enough to make Sears and KMart profitable again drove the stock very high. But the reality that this strategy was impossible finally drove the value lower than when the journey started. The debacle has ruined 2 companies, thousands of employees’ careers, many shopping mall operators, many suppliers, many communities, and since 2007 thousands of investor’s gains. Four years up, then 9 years down. It happened a lot faster than anyone would have imagined in 2003 or 2004. But it did.
And it could happen to you. Invert your strategic planning time. Spend 80% on trends and scenario planning, and 20% on historical analysis. It might save your business.
by Adam Hartung | Dec 30, 2015 | Current Affairs, Defend & Extend, In the Whirlpool, Leadership
2015 was not short on bad decisions, nor bad outcomes. But there are 5 major leadership themes from 2015 that can help companies be better in 2016:
1 – Cost cutting, restructurings and stock buybacks do not increase company value – Dow/DuPont
There was no shortage of financial engineering experiments in 2015 intended to increase short-term shareholder returns at the expense of long-term value creation. Companies continued borrowing money to buy back their own stock – spending more on repurchases than they made in profits.
Unfortunately, too many companies continue to increase earnings per share (EPS) via financial machinations rather than creating and introducing new products, or creating new markets.
In a grand show of value reducing financial re-engineering, 2015 is ending with the massive merger between Dow and DuPont. There is no intent of introducing new products or entering new markets via this merger. Rather, to the contrary, the plan is to merge these beasts, lay off tens of thousands of employees, cut the R&D staff, cut new product introductions and “rationalize” the company into 3 new businesses intended to be relaunched as new companies, with fewer products, less business development and less competition.
Massive cost cutting will weaken both companies, put thousands out of work and leave the marketplace with fewer new products. All just to create 3 new, different profit and loss statements in the hopes of improving the EPS and price to earnings (P/E) multiple. This story has become all too familiar the last few years, and the only winners are the bankers, who will make massive fees, and hedge fund managers that rapidly dump the stock in the terrible companies they leave behind.
2 – Doing more of the same is not innovative and does not create value – McDonald’s
McDonald’s has been losing market share to fast casual restaurants for over a decade. Yet, leadership insists on constantly maintaining its undying focus on the fast food success formula upon which the company was launched some 60 years ago.
As the number of customers continued declining, McDonalds kept closing more stores. Yet, sales per store remained weak even as the denominator grew smaller. Unwilling to actually update McDonald’s to make it fit modern trends, in 2015 leadership decided the path to growth was serving breakfast all-day. Really. It is still hard to believe. No new products, just the same McMuffins and sausage biscuits, but now offered for more hours.
Because of McDonald’s size and legacy the media covered this story heavily in 2015. Yet, as 2016 starts we all can look back and see that this was no story at all. Doing more of the same is not in any way innovative or revolutionary. Defending and extending an outdated success formula does not fix a company strategy that is out of date and rapidly losing relevancy.
3 – Hiring the wrong CEO is a BIG problem – Yahoo
We would like to think that Boards are really good at hiring CEOs. Unfortunately, we are regularly reminded they are not. The Board at Yahoo has spent a decade making bad CEO selections, and now the company’s core business is valueless.
In 2015 we saw that the decision by Yahoo’s board to hire a CEO based on political correctness (gender advantages), and limited experience with a well known company (a short Google career) rather than leadership capability could be deadly. Although Marissa Mayer was hired in 2012 amid much fanfare, we learned in 2015 that Yahoo is worth only the value of its Alibaba shareholdings, and no more. Yahoo as it was founded is now worth – nothing.
After 3 years of Mayer leadership it became clear that “there was no there, there” at Yahoo (to quote Gertrude Stein.) The value of the company’s “core” search and content accumulation businesses dropped to zero. Although 3 years have passed, practically no progress has been made toward developing a new business able to compete in the market shifted to social media and instant communications. Investors now realize Ms. Mayer has failed to grow future revenue and profits for the historical internet leader. Following a decade of incompetent CEOs, Yahoo has been left almost wholly irrelevant.
What was once Yahoo will soon be Alibaba USA, as the company gets rid of its old businesses – in some fashion, although who would want them is unclear – in order to allow shareholders to preserve their value in Alibaba stock purchased by Jerry Yang in 2005.
Yahoo has become irrelevant, replaced by its minority stake in Alibaba, largely due to a Board unable to identify and hire a competent CEO – ending with the wholly unqualified selection of Ms. Mayer, who will achieve at least a footnote in history for the outsized compensation package she received and the huge severance that will come her way, wildly out of proportion to her poor performance, when leaving Yahoo.
4 – Even 1 dumb leadership decision can devastate a company — Turing Pharmaceuticals and CEO Shkreli
In 2015 former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli raised a lot of money, and obtained control of an anit-parasitic pharmaceutical product. Recognizing that his customers either paid up or died, and being young, naïve, enormously greedy and without much oversight he decided to raise product pricing 70-fold. This would leave his customers either dead, bankrupt or bankrupting the insurance companies paying for his product – but he infamously said he did not care.
Thumbing your nose at customers, and regulators, is never a good idea. And even if they could not roll back the price quickly, they could target the CEO and his company for further investigation. It didn’t take long until Mr. Shrkeli was indicted for stock manipulation, leaving Turing Pharmaceuticals in disrepair as it rapidly cut staff and tried to determine what it will do next. Now KaloBios Pharma, controlled by Turing, is forced to file bankruptcy.
Never forget that Al Capone did not go to prison for stealing, bribing police, bootlegging, number running, murder or other gangster behavior. He went to prison for tax evasion. The simple lesson is, when you think you are smarter than everyone else, can do whatever you want and thumb your nose at those with government powers you’ll soon find yourself under the microscope of investigation, and most likely in really big trouble. And in the desire to take down the unwise CEO corporations become mere fodder.
The pharma industry is a regular target of consumers and politicians. Now not only are the investors in Turing damaged by this foolishly incompetent CEO, but the entire industry will once again be under close scrutiny for its pricing practices. Arrogantly making brash decisions, based on ill-formed thinking and juvenile egotism, without careful, thoughtful consideration can create enormous damage.
5 – Putting short-term results above good business practice will hurt you very badly long-term – Volkswagen and Takata
VW cheated on its emissions tests. Takata sold deadly, exploding airbags. Both companies are large organizations with layers of management. How could judgemenetal errors so big, so costly and so deadly happen?
These outcomes did not happen because of just “one bad apple.” Cultural acceptance of lying takes years of leadership focused on short-term results, even when it means operating unethically or illegally, to be inculcated. It took years for layers of management to learn how to turn away from problems, falsify test results, fake outcomes, lie to customers and even lie to regulators. It took years to create a culture of tolerated deception and willful misrepresentation.
Unfortunately, the auto industry is a tough place to make money. There is a lot of regulation, and a lot of competition. When it becomes too hard to make money honestly, cheating can become far too easily accepted. Rather than trying to revolutionize the auto making process, or the product itself, it can be a lot easier to push managers all the way down to the front-line of procurement, manufacturing or sales to simply cheat.
“Make your numbers” becomes a mantra. If you want to keep your job, or even more importantly if you want to move up, do whatever it takes to tell those above you what they want to hear. And those above don’t ask too many questions, don’t try to figure out how results happen – just keep applying pressure to those below to do what’s necessary to make the numbers.
As VW and Takata showed us, eventually the company will be caught. And the consequences are severe. Now those companies, their customers, their employees and their shareholders are suffering. And industry regulations will tighten further to make it harder to cheat. Everyone loses when short-term results are the top goal, rather than building a sustainable long-term business.
Let’s hope for better leadership in 2016.
by Adam Hartung | Dec 13, 2015 | In the Whirlpool, Innovation, Leadership
DuPont is one of America’s oldest corporations. Founded by Eleuthere Irenee duPont as a gunpowder manufacturer for the Revolutionary War, the company has long been one of America’s leading business institutions. From humble beginnings, DuPont became well known as a leader in Research & Development, a consistent leader in patent applications, and the inventor of products that proliferate in our lives from nylon to Teflon pans plastic bottles to Kevlar vests.
But in a series of fast actions during 2015, DuPont as it has been known is going away. And it is too bad the leadership wasn’t in place to save it. Now there will be a short-term bump to investors, but long-term cost cutting will decimate a once great innovation leader. When the bankers take over, it’s never pretty for employees, suppliers, customers or the local community.
It has been a long time since DuPont was the kind of business leader that gathered attention like, say, Apple or Google. From dynamic roots, the company had become quite stodgy and unexciting. Many felt leadership was over-spending on overhead costs like R&D,product development and headquarters personnel.
Thus Trian Fund, led by activist investor Nelson Peltz, set its sites on DuPont, buying 2.7% of the shares and launching a proxy campaign to place its slate of directors on the Board. The objective? Slash R&D and other costs, sell some divisions, raise cash in a hurry and dress up the P&L for a higher short-term valuation.
These sort of attacks almost always work. But DuPont’s CEO, Ellen Kullman, dug in her heels and fought back. She aligned her Board, spent $15M making her case to shareholders, and in a surprising victory beat back Mr. Peltz keeping the board and management intact. In a great rarity, this May DuPont’s management convinced enough shareholders to back their efforts for improving the P&L via their own restructuring and cost improvements, planned divestitures and organic growth that existing leadership remained intact.
But this victory was quite short-lived. By October, Ms. Kullman was forced out as CEO. A few days later the CFO reported quarterly profits that were only half the previous year. Sales had continued a history of declining in almost all divisions and across almost all geographic segments – with total revenue down to $5B from $7.5B a year ago. As it had done in July and previous quarters end-of-year projections were again lowered.
Net/net – CEO Kullman and management may have won the Trian battle, but they clearly lost the business war. Unable to actually profitably grow the company, the Board lost patience. They were willing to support management, but when that team could not produce the innovations to keep growing they were willing to accelerate cost cutting ($1B in 2015 alone) in order to prop up short-term stock valuation.
Now the newly placed transaction-oriented CEO of Dupont has cooked up a deal the bankers simply love. Merge DuPont with Saran Wrap and Ziploc inventor Dow Chemical, which itself has been the target of Third Point’s activist leader Dan Loeb (which Dow settled by giving Third Point 2 board seats rather than risk a proxy battle.) Then whack even more costs – some $3B – and lay off some 20,000 of the combined companies’ 110,000 employees. Then split the remaining operations into 3 new companies and spin those out publicly.
Sounds so good on paper. So simple. And think of the size of the investment banking and legal fees!!!! That will create some great partner bonuses in 2016!
Theoretically, this will create 3 companies that are more profitable, even though sales are not improving at all. Improved P&L’s will be projected into the future, and higher P/E (price to earnings) multiples on the stock should yield investors a very nice short-term gain. A one-time investor “Christmas present.”
But what will investors actually own? The lower cost companies will now be largely without R&D, new product development, internal patent departments, university research grant management programs, and many of the finance, marketing and sales personnel. Exactly how will future growth be assured? What will happen to these once-great sources of invention and innovation?
Nothing about this mega-transaction actually makes business better for anyone:
- The companies are no closer aligned with market trends than before. In fact, lacking people in innovation positions (product development, R&D and marketing) they are very likely to become even further removed from the leading trends that could create breakthrough products.
- Competition will be reduced short-term, so there will be less price pressure. But longer-term innovation will shift to smaller companies like Monsanto and Syngenta, or even companies currently not on the industry radar – as well as universities. These big companies will be removed from the leading edge of competition, the innovation edge, and will much more likely miss the next wave of products in all markets as new competitors emerge.
- There will be no resources to develop or manage new innovations that emerge internally, or externally. The much smaller staffs will have no bandwidth to explore new technologies, new products, new go-to-market channels or new ways of doing business. There will be no resources for white space teams to explore market shifts, consider major threats to their “core,” or develop potentially disruptive businesses that will generate future growth.
A very smart CFO once told me “when the finance guys are figuring out how to make money, rather than the business guys, you need to be very worried.” Clever transactions, like the one proposed between DuPont and Dow, do not replace great leadership. These are one-time events, and almost always leave the remaining assets weaker and less competitive than before.
Leadership requires understanding markets, managing innovation, creating new solutions, disrupting old businesses by launching new ones, and generating recurring profitable sales growth. Unfortunately, DuPont suffered from a lack of great leadership for several years, which left it vulnerable. Now the bankers are in charge, busy managing spreadsheets rather than products, customers and sales.
Don’t be confused. In no way does this merger and reorganization improve the competitiveness of these businesses. And for that reason, it will not offer a long-term value enhancement for shareholders. But even more obvious is the outcome negative outcome we can expect for employees, suppliers, customers and the communities in which these companies have operated. Bad leadership let the hyenas in, and they will pick the best meat off the bone for themselves first – leaving seriously damaged carcasses for everyone else.
by Adam Hartung | May 8, 2015 | Current Affairs, Defend & Extend, Food and Drink, In the Swamp, In the Whirlpool, Leadership
McDonald’s just had another lousy quarter. All segments saw declining traffic, revenues fell 11%. Profits were off 33%. Pretty well expected, given its established growth stall.
A new CEO is in place, and he announced is turnaround plan to fix what ails the burger giant. Unfortunately, his plan has been panned by just about everyone. Unfortunately, its a “me too” plan that we’ve seen far too often – and know doesn’t work:
- Reorganize to cut costs. By reshuffling the line-up, and throwing out a bunch of bodies management formerly said were essential, but now don’t care about, they hope to save $300M/year (out of a $4.5B annual budget.)
- Sell off 3,500 stores McDonald’s owns and operate (about 10% of the total.) This will further help cut costs as the operating budgets shift to franchisees, and McDonald’s book unit sales creating short-term, one-time revenues into 2018.
- Keep mucking around with the menu. Cut some items, add some items, try a bunch of different stuff. Hope they find something that sells better.
- Try some service ideas in which nobody really shows any faith, like adding delivery and/or 24 hour breakfast in some markets and some stores.
Needless to say, none of this sounds like it will do much to address quarter after quarter of sales (and profit) declines in an enormously large company. We know people are still eating in restaurants, because competitors like 5 Guys, Meatheads, Burger King and Shake Shack are doing really, really well. But they are winning primarily because McDonald’s is losing. Even though CEO Easterbrook said “our business model is enduring,” there is ample reason to think McDonald’s slide will continue.
Possibly a slide into oblivion. Think it can’t happen? Then what happened to Howard Johnson’s? Bob’s Big Boy? Woolworth’s? Montgomery Wards? Size, and history, are absolutely no guarantee of a company remaining viable.
In fact, the odds are wildly against McDonald’s this time. Because this isn’t their first growth stall. And the way they saved the company last time was a “fire sale” of very valuable growth assets to raise cash that was all spent to spiffy up the company for one last hurrah – which is now over. And there isn’t really anything left for McDonald’s to build upon.
Go back to 2000 and McDonald’s had a lot of options. They bought Chipotle’s Mexican Grill in 1998, Donato’s Pizza in 1999 and Boston Market in 2000. These were all growing franchises. Growing a LOT faster, and more profitably, than McDonald’s stores. They were on modern trends for what people wanted to eat, and how they wanted to be served. These new concepts offered McDonald’s fantastic growth vehicles for all that cash the burger chain was throwing off, even as its outdated yellow stores full of playgrounds with seats bolted to the floors and products for 99cents were becoming increasingly not only outdated but irrelevant.
But in a change of leadership McDonald’s decided to sell off all these concepts. Donato’s in 2003, Chipotle went public in 2006 and Boston Market was sold to a private equity firm in 2007. All of that money was used to fund investments in McDonald’s store upgrades, additional supply chain restructuring and advertising. The “strategy” at that time was to return to “strategic focus.” Something that lots of analysts, investors and old-line franchisees love.
But look what McDonald’s leaders gave up via this decision to re-focus. McDonald’s received $1.5B for Chipotle. Today Chipotle is worth $20B and is one of the most exciting fast food chains in the marketplace (based on store growth, revenue growth and profitability – as well as customer satisfaction scores.) The value of all of the growth gains that occurred in these 3 chains has gone to other people. Not the investors, employees, suppliers or franchisees of McDonald’s.
We have to recognize that in the mid-2000s McDonald’s had the option of doing 180degrees opposite what it did. It could have put its resources into the newer, more exciting concepts and continued to fidget with McDonald’s to defend and extend its life even as trends went the other direction. This would have allowed investors to reap the gains of new store growth, and McDonald’s franchisees would have had the option to slowly convert McDonald’s stores into Donato’s, Chipotle’s or Boston Market. Employees would have been able to work on growing the new brands, creating more revenue, more jobs, more promotions and higher pay. And suppliers would have been able to continue growing their McDonald’s corporate business via new chains. Customers would have the benefit of both McDonald’s and a well run transition to new concepts in their markets. This would have been a win/win/win/win/win solution for everyone.
But it was the lure of “focus” and “core” markets that led McDonald’s leadership to make what will likely be seen historically as the decision which sent it on the track of self-destruction. When leaders focus on their core markets, and pull out all the stops to try defending and extending a business in a growth stall, they take their eyes off market trends. Rather than accepting what people want, and changing in all ways to meet customer needs, leaders keep fiddling with this and that, and hoping that cost cutting and a raft of operational activities will save the business as they keep focusing ever more intently on that old core business. But, problems keep mounting because customers, quite simply, are going elsewhere. To competitors who are implementing on trends.
The current CEO likes to describe himself as an “internal activist” who will challenge the status quo. But he then proves this is untrue when he describes the future of McDonald’s as a “modern, progressive burger company.” Sorry dude, that ship sailed years ago when competitors built the market for higher-end burgers, served fast in trendier locations. Just like McDonald’s 5-years too late effort to catch Starbucks with McCafe which was too little and poorly done – you can’t catch those better quality burger guys now. They are well on their way, and you’re still in port asking for directions.
McDonald’s is big, but when a big ship starts taking on water it’s no less likely to sink than a small ship (i.e. Titanic.) And when a big ship is badly steered by its captain it flounders, and sinks (i.e. Costa Concordia.) Those who would like to think that McDonald’s size is a benefit should recognize that it is this very size which now keeps McDonald’s from doing anything effective to really change the company. Its efforts (detailed above) are hemmed in by all those stores, franchisees, commitment to old processes, ingrained products hard to change due to installed equipment base, and billions spent on brand advertising that has remained a constant even as McDonald’s lost relevancy. It is now sooooooooo hard to make even small changes that the idea of doing more radical things that analysts are requesting simply becomes impossible for existing management.
And these leaders, frankly, aren’t even going to try. They are deeply wedded, committed, to trying to succeed by making McDonald’s more McDonald’s. They are of the company and its history. Not the CEO, or anyone on his team, reached their position by introducing a revolutionary new product, much less a new concept – or for that matter anything new. They are people who “execute” and work to slowly improve what already exists. That’s why they are giving even more decision-making control to franchisees via selling company stores in order to raise cash and cut costs – rather than using those stores to introduce radical change.
These are not “outside thinkers” that will consider the kinds of radical changes Louis V. Gerstner, a total outsider, implemented at IBM – changing the company from a failing mainframe supplier into an IT services and software company. Yet that is the only thing that will turn around McDonald’s. The Board blew it once before when it sold Chipotle, et.al. and put in place a core-focused CEO. Now McDonald’s has fewer resources, a lot fewer options, and the gap between what it offers and what the marketplace wants is a lot larger.
by Adam Hartung | Oct 28, 2014 | Current Affairs, Defend & Extend, Food and Drink, In the Swamp, Leadership, Lock-in, Television
I’m a “Boomer,” and my generation could have been called the Coke generation. Our parents started every day with a cup of coffee, and they drank either coffee or water during the day. Most meals were accompanied by either water, or iced tea.
But our generation loved Coca-Cola. Most of our parents limited our consumption, much to our frustration. Some parents practically refused to let the stuff in the house. In progressive homes as children we were usually only allowed one, or at most two, bottles per day. We chafed at the controls, and when we left home we started drinking the sweet cola as often as we could.
It didn’t take long before we supplanted our parent’s morning coffee with a bottle of Coke (or Diet Coke in more modern times.) We seemingly could not get enough of the product, as bottle size soared from 8 ounces to 12 to 16 and then quarts and eventually 2 liters! Portion control was out the window as we created demand that seemed limitless.
Meanwhile, Americans exported our #1 drink around the world. From 1970 onward Coke was THE iconic American brand. We saw ads of people drinking Coke in every imaginable country. International growth seemed boundless as people from China to India started consuming the irresistible brown beverage.
My how things change. Last week Coke announced third quarter earnings, and they were down 14%. The CEO admitted he was struggling to find growth for the company as soda sales were flat. U.S. sales of carbonated beverages have been declining for a decade, and Coke has not developed a successful new product line – or market – to replace those declines.
Coke is a victim of changing customer preferences. Once a company that helped define those preferences, and built the #1 brand globally, Coke’s leadership shifted from understanding customers and trends in order to build on those trends towards defending & extending sales of its historical product. Instead of innovating, leadership relied on promotion and tactics which had helped the brand grow 30 years ago. They kept to their old success formula as trends shifted the market into new directions.
Coke began losing its relevancy. Trends moved in a new direction. Healthfulness led customers to decide they wanted a less calorie rich, nutritionally starved drink. And concerns grew over “artificial” products, such as sweeteners, leading customers away from even low calorie “diet” colas.
Meanwhile, younger generations started turning to their own new brands. And not just drinks. Instead of holding a Coke, increasingly they hold an iPhone. Where once it was hip to hang out at the Coke machine, or the fountain stand, now people would rather hang out at a Starbucks or Peet’s Coffee. Where once Coke was identified and matched the aspirations of the fast growing Boomer class, now it is replaced with a Prada handbag or other accessory from an LVMH branded luxury product.
Where once holding a Coke was a sign of being part of all that was good, now the product is largely passe. Trends have moved, and Coke didn’t. Coke leadership relied too much on its past, and failed to recognize that market shifts could affect even the #1 global brand. Coke leaders thought they would be forever relevant, just do more of what worked before. But they were wrong.
Unfortunately, CEO Muhtar Kent announced a series of changes that will most likely further hurt the Coca-Cola company rather than help it.
First, and foremost, like almost all CEOs facing an earnings problem the company will cut $3B in costs. The most short-term of short-term actions, which will do nothing to help the company find its way back toward being a prominent brand-leading icon. Cost cuts only further create a “hunker-down” mindset which causes managers to reduce risk, rather than look for breakthrough products and markets which could help the company regain lost ground. Cost cutting will only further cause remaining management to focus on defending the past business rather than finding a new future.
Second, Coca-Cola will sell off its bottlers. Interestingly, in the 1980s CEO Roberto Goizueta famously bought up the distributorships, and made a fortune for the company doing so. By the year 2000 he was honored, along with Jack Welch of GE, as being one of the top 2 CEOs of the century for his ability to create shareholder value. But now the current CEO is selling the bottling operations – in order to raise cash. Once again, when leadership can’t run a business that makes money they often sell off assets to generate cash and make the company smaller – none of which benefits shareholders.
Third, fire the Chief Marketing Officer. Of course, somebody has to be blamed! The guy who has done the most to bring Coca-Cola’s brand out of traditional advertising and promote it in an integrated manner across all media, including managing successful programs for the Olympics and World Cup, has to be held accountable. What’s missing in this action is that the big problem is leadership’s fixation with defending its Coke brand, rather than finding new growth businesses as the market moves away from carbonated soft drinks. And that is a problem that requires the CEO and his entire management team to step up their strategy efforts, not just fire the leader who has been updating the branding mechanisms.
Coca-Cola needs a significant strategy shift. Leadership focused too long on its aging brands, without putting enough energy into identifying trends and figuring out how to remain relevant. Now, people care a lot less about Coke than they did. They care more about other brands, like Apple. Globally. Unless there is a major shift in Coke’s strategy the company will continue to weaken along with its primary brand. That market shift has already happened, and it won’t stop.
For Coke to regain growth it needs a far different future which aligns with trends that now matter more to consumers. The company must bring forward products which excite people ,and with which they identify. And Coke’s leaders must move much harder into understanding shifts in media consumption so they can make their new brands as visible to newer generations as TV made Coke visible to Boomers.
Coke is far from a failed company, but after a decade of sales declines in its “core” business it is time leadership realizes takes this earnings announcement as a key indicator of the need to change. And not just simple things like costs. It must fundamentally change its strategy and markets or in another decade things will look far worse than today.
