Thread regarding 3M layoffs

@pq sadly 3M board knew exactly what it was doing when they hired BB. They wanted a goosed share price with the company being parceled off in pieces. The idea of "sum of the parts greater than the whole" is a Wall Street lie but enough short-term focused investors swallow it hook line and sinker.

GLTA with the remains of what was a great company

I didn't mind generating a return for stockholders, but it's pretty obvious to those of us still at 3M that the strategy is to cut expenses to play games with the sheet.

Stock goes up, BB collects his paycheck, and he leaves everyone who works here holding the bag, stuck at an anemic company where we can't get things done because we don't have the people or the resources, and leadership has been told not to spend money.

It'll take five years or so for those chickens to really come home to roost, but I'm that time BB will be retired and will have sold of half his 3M portfolio.

Unfortunately you all work for a publicly traded corporation. It’s shouldn’t be a surprise that the shareholders are king. Are ya that thick that you didn’t know how it worked when you applied for the job with 3M?

Don’t act like a victim

@ek right to the point! If "healthy" = "return to shareholders" - correct. This capitalism in its finest. More money for rich, the rest can go f*k themselves...

@ek you might be happier at a non profit or government job.

@ea I think this comment completely confirms the disconnect between executives and the rest of us. I don't consider whether 3M is "healthy" to be tied to the stock price...like at all. 3M is healthy if I don't feel like I'm at risk for losing my job when I badge in every morning. Executives just want to see Wall Street happy, the stock to go up, their pay going up accordingly. At least Bill is mentioning growth as a way to accomplish those three goals, so that's a step in the right direction post Roman. But as you said...winners and losers...

@dt Im the OP - I retired a couple years ago so am not qualified remotely to comment on the specifics of the cost actions and portfolio moves BB is leading. I respect your passion for investing and growing the right way with real innovation. If you listen to the q3 call he gives an example of an abrasives exit and how it will be accretive even though sales would be sacrificed, it was good commentary for the investors, and I know that is the kind of work that constantly needs to get done in a complex portfolio like 3M.

The reality is from an external perspective this gameplan is working at the moment and was sorely lacking under Roman and Monish.

All you need in 3M is growth at or above IPI and margin expansion for the stock to do well with the still pretty high return on capital the company has due to its business model.

For all of you who think this guy is an id--t, mortgaging the future, whatever...I get it.

There are winners and losers in a gameplan like this.

If he can keep this momentum for another two years the stock could double and you can exit whatever you have and make some money.

@bh Desi's best move was spinning Imation. The data storage space was rapidly changing and 3M didn't realize people were thinking toward a cloud structure and not smaller physical devices with more capacity. Within 10 years Imation was a hollowed out shell of itself.

He did have a lot of new product launches during his time, which set up the company for better future. Unfortunately Mighty Mac brought his GE cost cutting mentality which started the decline.

On Buckley, Joe Harlan was clearly the superior leader for customer service and innovation but he was an external hire. 3M board decided to promote a 3M lifer, which ultimately doomed what mcnerney started. Inge and Mikey are rich but hopefully sold their shares when BB got it over 150.

Sad to see a 20th century icon limp across the finish line as a bunch of carves. BB will be back on his Florida yacht for good in 2 years, much richer than ever.

@OP Mr VP/GM undoubtedly you have a lot of experience on the business side of 3M. With all due respect, all what BB is doing is balancing the P&L statement. In. That case I would question about the SG&A line. What are the 70 new products? They are probably Class 3- old products packaged for new industry or replacement. Where is R&D innovation ? What are the R&D SVPs and VPs doing to compete in the fast moving market? That is where there is a gaping hole. Plans seem to be more short term thinking as usual. Nothing spectacular as I see now.

@b7 Buckley is arguably the only "builder" in 20-30 yrs, or more. Desi might be a harder call, since he did the Imation spin, but other than that big one I don't think he did tons of layoffs and did make a big push into microrep. Jimmy, Inge, Roman all did nothing but cuts. Buckley grew it back a bit, but wasn't around long enough to fix the slide. And even he still ended up laying off during the 08-09 crash too. BB is talking growth but it's all talk. If he backs it up with $ and people, then I'll change my tune. So far all I see is crimped budgets that are significantly lower than pre-covid and essentially no hiring, with lots of people leaving voluntarily or otherwise.

@b1 it's like a pendulum. Cutters like mcnerney and thulin alternate with 'builders' like buckley. Roman was who knows what. Reality is this cutting for margin expansion and cashflow generation is needed to serve what will always be the most important constiturncy the shareholders. We will see what happens but this is a proven gameplan and finally being executed seemingly well.

This is not a healthy company. This is Jimmy Mac's playbook all over again: cut and squeeze as much as you can. It makes the numbers look better - for a while. The problem is that at the root of that method is underinvestment in the businesses, as R&D and marketing costs money, which is the opposite of the GE cut-cut-cut method. You can't invest if all you want to do is squeeze.

So it all collapses in a few years as there is no longer any pipeline. BB has been saying the words "a thousand new NPIs!" but the money and people are not there to cover the existing NPI load, much less grow that number...At least other than gaming the system where people split one program into multiples to goose the "number" of programs without any improvement in sales growth. In fact, it probably lowers results a bit as separate programs all have some inherent level of overhead in the 3M systems to get them to launch, so it takes more effort to get the same output.

There are times that cuts are needed, no matter how hard it is on people, but we are way past that time and should be investing significantly to get out of this hole. We are not doing that. We are getting only lip service about investing, but there is nothing real behind those words. This is not healthy, and will not get better unless this changes.

OP. I want 3M to be healthy, and wonder what it is trying to be (without breaking into multiple businesses (like GE)) - if they ‘carve out’ industrial and ‘prune’, what is 3M and where does it focus and grow? Asking because I want to feel more optimistic, but it’s been like a decade of cuts, outsourcing, settlements and confusion about what 3M’s identity is.

Hopefully it can all be held together thru the major lawsuit distractions.