Shareholder Has Terse Questions About Ailing Skechers’ Designs
Skechers U.S.A. Inc. found itself fending off an angry Wall Street money manager after the Manhattan Beach shoe manufacturer announced that its business was hitting the skids.
During a conference call on July 24, money manager John Gordon of New York-based Deltec Asset Management complained that David Weinberg, Skechers chief financial officer, didn’t have enough “sense of urgency” about the company’s lackluster performance.
Gordon said Weinberg’s pronouncements made him think about the last scene in the film “Thelma and Louise,” in which the heroines chose to plummet to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
That day, Weinberg announced that the company lost $2 million for the second quarter ended June 31 while seeing a 56 percent jump in inventories.
Weinberg said that even though he and other Skechers officials understood the company’s performance hasn’t been “stellar,” they didn’t feel things required them to be in “a panic mode.”
During the call, Gordon asked Weinberg why the company didn’t consider scaling back its expansion efforts which include the launch of two new shoe brands and expansion Canada and Spain and hand over some of its $41 million cash horde to shareholders.
Weinberg retorted that those initiatives should be given “a chance to mature.” After the call, he told the Business Journal that “we probably won’t be as aggressive next year as we have been this year. But we’re not going to stop the initiatives we’re completing.”
RiShawn Biddle
Dealmaking
L.A. investment bank and securities brokerage firm Seidler Cos. Inc. said it worked as a financial advisor on the merger of Hyco Biomedical Inc., a Garden Grove maker of diagnostic instruments, and Stratagene, a La Jolla developer of biomedical gene technologies. Though terms of the deal were not disclosed, the two companies are expected to have combined revenues of $85 million.
The merged company will assume the Hyco name.
Seidler also promoted Paul Beck, senior vice president, to executive vice president of finance and administration, while David Bain, a senior research analyst, has been promoted to manager of the firm’s research department.
Kate Berry
Deal List
Looking for a nationwide list of deals either real or announced?
The Mercanti Group, a boutique investment bank based both in Los Angeles and Minneapolis, publishes its own monthly research report called “The Mercanti Chronicle” that contains an exhaustive list of both announced and anticipated deals nationwide, as well as original research on Wall Street trends.
Jim D’Aquila, the firm’s founder, said the list goes to about 2,000 chief executives and equity investors, many of whom had nowhere to turn to find out about the latest deal. D’Aquila assigned several researchers to compile the deal list and “it sort of snowballed after that,” he said.
Mercanti, which served as the lead investment bank on the March purchase by K2 Inc. of Rawlings Sporting Goods Co., also said it has hired Steve Rickman, a former managing director and co-head of software and Internet mergers at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, as a managing director. In addition to software and e-commerce, he will focus on the firm’s health care practice.
Kate Berry
