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Two Years of Mike Z.
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.
More: Hoover’s Tim Walker wonders if Nortel has finally turned the corner.
Technorati Tags: Mike Zafirovski, Nortel
Topics: Stock |
November 26th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Mr Z’s record is awful to date, but here is my prediction.
1. Nortel will deliver a very modest profit in Q4 to follow Q3.
2. Z will continue to talk up all that he has accomplished.
3. Stock will go up a bit.
4. Z will get offered a new job by some private equity outfit in 1H08.
5. Z will leave Nortel touting his accomplishments and saying he has turned it around.
6. Nortel will then tank under Z’s handpicked successor, Joel “slap-happy” Hackney
7. Nortel gets broken up in 1H09. Z, when reached for comments, says that it was going great when he left it.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:34 am
Two years of Mike Z is like two terms of George Bush. Bad hiring, controversial cabinet members, and poor results.
December 1st, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Okay Nortel employees, here comes year two of the forced ranking system ! Are you ready ?
Perhaps this was instituted in order for Nortel to get rid of older/higher cost employees. My guess is there will be a class action lawsuit at some point as Nortel continues to shed older/higher cost workers as more work moves to China and India.
http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/spring04/forced.html