Now Hear This!

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