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Monday, June 23, 2008
Motorola stock hits new 5-year low – Again!
Jun 23 2008 5:39PM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (5) |
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A friend of mine who works for Motorola here on Long Island called to chat the other day. He said he’s been sneaking his personal items out of the office one by one to avoid having to drag all of his photos, stress balls, and other cubicle clutterings home if -- or as he believes, when -- he is ultimately laid off. I didn’t have to ask what was behind his premonition.
The company’s stock, MOT, hit a new five-year low today. To be sure, this is the second new five-year low in less than a week. The stock slump at $7.61 last week and today sank even deeper into Motorola’s growing pit of despair, trading between $7.30 and $7.63. That’s up to a 64 cent fall from Friday’s close of $7.94. MOT closed today at $7.44, a 50 cent drop in trading day over day.
It’s not hard to see why MOT has sunk like a lead weight from its $19.24 52-week-high close on October 26, 2007. Layoffs, executive resignations, falling handset shipments, and so on -- The number of issues plaguing Motorola in the last year and half have become to long to list. Last week’s low seems to have been caused by statements from Motorola contract manufacturer Foxconn that Moto “is still having 
difficulties.” Today’s decline was pushed by a handful of investment firms lowering their outlooks for the Schaumburg, Ill-based company.
What is hard to see is how new CEO Greg Brown and company plan on returning value to shareholders and how they will come up with support for Motorola’s mobile devices business spin off.
Previous arguments were that Motorola’s handset brand recognition would be enough to entice buyer interest. But Moto released a new camera phone today with Kodak (yet another company with name recognition but a cloudy business outlook) and did anyone care? Did you even blink an eye at the Motozine ZN5 (pictured)?
Share your thoughts on Motorola, its stock, or its products below.
--Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News
Reader Comments
at 6/24/2008 2:59:54 PM, Keith said:
Moto's recovery will come with new products, not as a result of a "plan" by Greg Brown. The ZN5 is a nice product. Is it game-changing? No... But, it is a good solution for someone looking for a high-quality camera phone. With embedded WiFi and bluetooth, you get cheap wireless transfers rather than relying on 3G technology (at another $20-$30 per month for the data plan). Mot has its troubles for sure, but they still put out attractive phones. Once they get their cost structure issue solved, I believe they will recover.
at 6/24/2008 4:11:58 PM, Hardtruth said:
Long slow death looming for Mot. Miles behind versus Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung on all scores except perhaps US brand loyalty. The phones are average at best, the cameras are terrible, MP3 is a joke and the UI plain sucks.
at 6/24/2008 6:45:35 PM, Scar said:
Just scrap their software 3rd parties. Focus more on softwares of their phones, then their loyal buyers will return. Their software is crap. TI platform is weak.
at 6/25/2008 1:52:18 AM, IanP said:
Motorolas biggest problem has been its reliance on brand loyalty. Motorola was the cellphone industry leader ten years ago, but it grew fat and happy and forgot how to innovate. Moto's forays into Europe were less than happy, perhaps with the exception of its Scottish investment, as US designs are generally far too conservative for the technically forward European market
at 7/16/2008 6:30:43 PM, TheEnd said:
Just looking at their "New" phone, I would pass it by as being just another bulky, clunker looking phone for the one I just got (from a competitor). But frankly, it doesn't surprise me what has happened to Motorola. I know someone that worksworked there as an engineer, and .... let's just put it nicely... it doesn't surprise me that they are failing. She was one of those workers that had the mentality of "everybody will keep buying us just on our name alone"...... that the public will be willing to accept recycled styles, designs, programs, nothing inovative. Uh, I think this employee was recently laid off. Wonder why? But talking to this employee, mgave me insight into the environment there, and their "empire" mentality, and I am sure this employee wasn't the only one like that... So..... How odds on how long til "the end"?
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