The hard thing to understand is how last year record profits. Stock was rising everything was great management CEOs investors all profited. It didn't take long for them to decide that we will just cut all of our employees hours give them a 30% haircut as we continue to make our money. We will no longer contribute to any 401K programs. And we will just force them out by attrition. As you have a big article in a big newspaper stating a huge expansion adding jobs. I don't know how you can explain that. Commscope has always had a track record of laying people off and diverting staff to make sure everybody was able to make an income for their family. Management apparently now thinks it's okay to start everybody out. One bit of advice I would give is take your layoff send the people home with the least seniority restructure your hours and personnel to make sure the employees that have been there for years 15 20 30 years are taking care of cuz those are the ones that have made you your money. I'm sure this will fall on deaf ears. And the people that are laid off will be able to file for unemployment and make more money than they're making right now. I can't believe the id--ts that run this company today it's not the same place as it was years ago
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CommScope was rated as one of the top worst managed companies in the country the year I started there 25 years ago and I think it's actually gotten worse.
Arris reported $2b in non-current debt obligation on the last 10k they filed. See page 100-101 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1645494/000114420419011641/tv513982_10k.htm#a_014
Several people have stated that Arris had a lot of debt. It did not ! However the board did a great job for their shareholders. Sadly Eddie and the commscope board threw a tantrum and fired all the Arris management who knew how about Arris customers , products etc. They then shoed in their own boys who knew a lot about manufacturing but nothing about high tech. They still think every engineer is like a factory worker you can throw away and replace with another minimum wage deadbeat.
Dude, what u smoking? No company is without debt and Arris was trying to sell off dead weight after buying Ruckus when CS came knocking. Like purchasing Andrew, and BNS, CS offered too much and the shareholders couldn’t say no but did laugh all the way to the bank saying what su-kers.
ARRIS didn’t have debt, they actually had a healthy balance sheet. CommScope took on debt to buy ARRIS. Home business may not be as profitable today but it’s the debt of the acquisition being allocated to Home business making it a loss center and burdening the other BUs. The home business was mismanaged by McClelland, he made a lot of bad decisions with Comcast and AT&T out of fear but always remained profitable just and slim margins.
It's not just the c suite that is poor. Middle management have shown time and time again they have no leadership skills. They cut costs by reducing head count but there is just no plan to cover the work that needs doing apart from hiding and letting everyone else muddle along. Morale is in the toilet quality is not far behind.
Agree with both, yes prior mgmt was blind or didn’t want to see the failure coming. Carlyle saw easy money so they could bend CS over like they did before. Whether or not Chuck inherited this mess, he is paid well to fix it and things have gotten much worse and that’s on him. He has appears to have been more focused on bringing in his friends and that is never good.
To the last poster. Do you also blame your fellow coworkers that left the company, to cover failures?
He is the ceo, has a mega salary and golden parachute… knew what he was getting into.
He is failing, Commscope is in a death loop… a lot more action is required to save Commscope.
That’s why he gets paid 100 times your average Commscope worker salary.
No excuse!
Just to add to the last post, I don't think Treadway should shoulder a lot of this blame. I think he has done a relatively good job with what he was handed with. If you want to assign blame, then I think Edwards and Pease (the last CFO) should be responsible for this mess, but hardly get any attention. Yes, the products were complementary, but to buy a company more valuable then your own, hardly ever works out the way you want it to.
You cannot blame Arris for this- DYOR , CommScope had lost 50% of its value since the preceding April before the acquisition was closed. If CommScope senior had actually carried out due diligence they would have realised they were buying in to a declining market (who are the fools) - the absurdity of the synergies the combined company would bring was just a fairy tail to appease the investors and make it look like a good story - all in the past now - the quote by the then CEO is hilarious “Leverage is something that we have dealt with in our past several times with the acquisitions that we have done,” Edwards said. “It’s something we are used to and we know how to take cost out of the businesses as we acquire them.” - the fact is Arris and CommScope were the hospital cases in the industry - May be CommScope ELT should have tempered their enthusiasm for a large acquisition and stuck to more minnows to grow the business organically. Yes the pain we are all experiencing now has bee amplified by very poor decision making a lack of execution at a ELT and board level and they do not have an answer to the market or to address the situation - the last qtr conf call exposed the CEO and CFO and basically sunk a hole below the water line of CommScope NEXT (what ever that was)
This is BS. Employees are having to supplement their income by using their earned vacation days in order to pay their bills. So much for taking your family to the beach. It's more important to make the power bill and house payment.
This company is so far in debt it is crazy. Carlisle group has always been known to strip away all the profits and then discard them. The purchase of Arris with all of their debt and they're incompetent management has now infected a profitable company and it looks terminal. As plants continue to provide frivolous jobs. Diversity manager, scrap monitors, garbage can inspectors, and schedulers. These new created positions allow for employees to get a full paycheck the company also allows certain individuals to come in and work overtime to get a full paycheck. At what point in time are we going to go back to what's right for every employee that works there. There is a very big handbook of the rules of what's allowed at the workplace and how things are to be done. When the goal post gets moved around jobs are posted that's fair for everybody but when jobs are just given to individuals because you know so and so or because of whatever reason is completely unfair to everyone. We've got people walking around doing nothing making full pay. Now at what point in time is somebody going to whack some jobs that are unnecessary get rid of these VP's that we have in the company. I heard a great analogy commscope used to look like a Christmas tree it grew from the bottom up now comscope is just a mushroom. Take that to heart management