Where is the business going?

2013, the last full year of Joe Corasanti's reign, Conmed posted sales of $762 million. Of course, this was without any SQ sales. On the most recent earning announcement Hartman stated 2016 final sales of the legacy business would come in at $700 million, and SQ would come in at $67 million. Where did the $62 million go? Who's taking all that business from Conmed. Is that size of loss going to continue in 2017. How in the H---- did Hrtman lose $62 million in sales in 2.5 years? How's he and his staff getting away with that? Stock is off $10 points since announcement, while the overall market has climbed to record highs!

 

wait, you mean curt's plan isn't working? I am shocked! Fail ceo during time at Stryker implements same strategy with Arthrocare drop outs and cronies from Stryker? The m and a under Luke did not work? Maybe he did not use his spreadsheet from the roofing company? My money says him heather and Jonas will be scape goats.

 

The issue with Pomillio,Cohen and Jonas is it's hard to replace them when you can't find any quality substitutes willing to move to Utica! Unless you move HQ to Largo you are stuck with them. When Shallish left, Pomillio was the constant, everybody knew him, with Hartman on the hot seat the last thing you want to do is replace Pomillio too, it would make the analysts very nervous.

 

Hard to replace them??? WTF!!! Pomillio, Jonas, and Cohen have been key senior executives while the prior regime missed it's number for 7 straight years, and now under Hartman for 3 straight years. You could go in the back of the building and find 3 Bosnian production workers, give them these three's jobs and get the same results, or better. How could you do any worse? 10 straight years of misses hardly makes an argument for being irreplaceable. The Board of Directors at Conmed should take the top 20 highest paid executives and give them the boot! What's the boards plan? To sit back and allow this management team to take the legacy business from $700 million to $675 million or worse in 2017?

 

The "Board" obviously has not had a real "plan" in place for at least the last 12 years.

Does anyone really expect them to take any kind of positive action now?

And even if they replace KH, HC, LP and DJ, wouldn't that just start another massive round of senior staff turnover and replacements as the new "leadership" brings in all of their own "experts" to turn the business around? Again!

Sadly, that would only further damage the company which is already in a seriously weakened cash/market position and may be more seriously over-extended financially due to the SurgiQuest acquisition than people want to acknowledge.

General Surgery International Sales team eliminated - Check
Product development & administrative support for Patient Care products eradicated - Check
Sales team for Hyfrecator products eviscerated - Check
General Surgery International Customer Service team gutted - Check
General Surgery Domestic Customer Service team depleted & leaderless - Check
General Surgery Contracts Administration team depleted & leaderless - Check
General Surgery R&D Budget almost non-existent - Check
New General Surgery products in the pipeline - Helix????? - Seriously - ??????
General Surgery products Manufacturing Cost Reduction Strategy - ?????? - Hmmmmm!!!!!
Legacy General Surgery products marketing/sales plan in place to stop over 8 years of bleeding - Nope! Nothing! Nada! Zilch!

And the seemingly endless progression of experienced General Surgery administrative support staff either pushed out the door or exiting on their own continues on a daily basis . . . . . . . . .

Truly a sad sight to see for those of us who remember the days of stable employment, growing sales and solid profitability across the entire product portfolio back in the 80's, 90's and early 2000's.

 

The board is focused only on earnings. There are two ways to make earnings: growing the top line and/or reducing the bottom. Conmed has spent the last 5-7 years cutting the bottom line slightly faster than the top line has fallen. But there's not much more left to chop, and the product line is stale and tired. The only other trick is to fool the market via acquisitions, which hide the underlying decay through "exceptional expenses" and a stepped-up revenue increase. Surgiquest took care of this for a while but the market is getting wise. Expect the board to approve a) another acquisition, b) a massive layoff, or c) a fire sale of the company. Since the entire world knows what a piece of $hit the company is, expect option a and/or b. Either way, the only thing worse than being a Conmed sales person has to be being a Conmed employee.

 

Where are the activist shareholders now? Let's put a spotlight on the incompetence of this entire Management Team, Hartman and his Band of Merry Men as well as the Corasanti holdovers of Pomillio, Cohen, Jonas et el. Does anybody still have Voce's phone number!

 

Stealing time from the faulty plan

 

Do you mean that there was a plan?

 

If the board only cares about the earnings then they never do anything about it, or their in a COMA. 2016 is the 3rd straight year Hartman has missed his is EPS projection. In the last paragraph of the earnings conf. call Conmed said one reason they were missing this years EPS projection was that organic revenue (everything but SQ) was going to miss projections and cause a .07 shortfall in the EPS number. So no matter how many people or expenses Hartman cuts he can't make his EPS number because the organic revenue continues to decline.

 

The hard thing thing to believe is that if a ceo's job is to communicate his vision based on the direction of his business, how is it possible to be wrong for so long? I remember when this guy would show up at meeting and tell (out going) business unit leaders what their sale figures would be, what an a$&hole.

 

The Old ConMed was a conservative company, Gene was an accountant, Abraham would search out distressed companies, beat them up for months and pay pennies on the dollar for them, Shallish would keep Wall St. pacified and they would keep chugging along. No flash, just steady managed growth.

Fast forward to Joe and Luke. Maserati's and Porsche's in the parking lot, flying back and forth to Naples and the Frat boy trips to Europe with the entourage to pick up women. Spending money like the Ryan Lochte's of the of the Medical Device World! This is what happens to 2nd generation business'.

 

WTF are you talking about? You have most of the history right but Joe C and the gang have been gone for years.

 

Most of the comments here are true facts. This company has been declining for years with no chance of recovering from the devastating loss of market share and no new technology. It's a loser's game now and the remaining employees are just holding on to the hope of getting a severance package some day soon.

 

Let's

 

Let's face it, orthopaedics is the sales revenue generator for Conmed. Why is sales dropping? You can't just keep cutting and replacing the relationship reps and distributors like Tobin, Paratore, Dingas, and other long standing successful Conmed reps who have significant relationships and market share without consequences.
Management fires and replaces revenue contributors just to put friends in place. Management driven by emotion is a dangerous thing for companies.
One could surmise Conmed is run by children.