Two Years of Mike Z.

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By Mark Evans | November 23, 2007

Before you knew it, Mike Z.’s second anniversary as Nortel’s CEO slipped by last week with little fanfare.

For anyone keeping score, when Zafirovski was appointed Nortel’s president and CEO in mid-October, 2005, the company’s shares closed at $4.10. Yesterday, they closed at $1.69 (or $16.90 when you take into account a 10:1 stock consolidation). Zafirovski has talked about Nortel being a three to five year restructuring story so it looks like investors will need to be a little more patient.

Even so, Nortel is a long way away from being an interesting investment story. With, at best, modest, single-digit sales growth and a business that lacks a high-growth product/service, Nortel has little sizzle these days. But maybe being boring isn’t such a bad thing considering all the drama that happened amid the accounting scandal.

For what it’s worth, here’s a table of analysts’ expectations.