Leica Camera AG saved!!! Halleluja

I found the following statement particularly interesting:

"Mr. Spichtig said that he planned a streamlining, entailing, among other things, a halving of the Company’s inventory, which currently amounted to € 42 million."

That basically means clearing the store rooms. Since I'm contemplating to buy a new M7, I wonder how they will try to achive this? Drop the price of the M7 starter kit by EUR 500 and I'll help you on the above, I'd say ;)
 
My interpretation is that the binoculars will have to pay for the
restructuring of the camera division, they will start selling
enhanced other-manufacturer P&S digtal camera's again, continue
to work on R- and M systems to enhance them using
digital techniques, but not develop their own digital technology.
They mentioned the use of Leica lenses on Canon bodies specifically as
an example of the way the market works.
So based on this I should think they hope to make some money out of
the Digital Module, they hope to put the digital M on the market
as soon as possible and will introduce a Digilux 3 aimed at the
prosumer market asap.
Also the did some shares restructuring which I am unable to understand to
prevent the predicted losses of the coming year impacting on their
operations. Their predictions are based on a reduced turnover of
about 100 million Euro a year.
 
unsharp said:
So they're financed through 2006, at least. Guess we can go back to buy used Ms and lenses again...:)
Click to expand...

If you read this statement carefully you must be surprised, what a poor answer it is related to the current problems of this company. NONE of structural problems is mentioned, no announcements of any kind of basic changes. There is still no business plan and the CEO does not sound as if would have one in his drawer.

Improving sales (how ?) , reducing stock, doing somewhat digital (no clue what it could be) and a lot of blah-blah-blah. Some nuts at work ? Thsi is the very last chance but it sounds the want to keep it alive for a while to find a buyer.

Leica is not saved, they will burn money for one more year, that's all.

There were some very intersting contributions (of Leica users) about that on the CVUG list, which hit the nail on the head.

Regards,
Bertram
 
Bertram2 said:
If you read this statement carefully you must be surprised, what a poor answer it is related to the current problems of this company. NONE of structural problems is mentioned, no announcements of any kind of basic changes. There is still no business plan and the CEO does not sound as if would have one in his drawer.
Click to expand...

The public statements were sufficiently short on details that we wouldn't have seen any of that
either way. I'd wager that they DO have a business plan, because otherwise the investors would
probably not have agreed to fund them for another year or two. They would have wanted to see
HOW Leica plans to make a return on their investment before throwing more money at them.

What they're going to release to the public however is generally rather vague, but it does confirm
that they do plan on developing a strong portfolio of digital imaging products, which means that
though they're coming from behind relative to the rest of the industry, they are headed in the right
direction.

And they did mention a reorg... so they obviously DID consider an plan to address the structural
problems.
 
tamerlin said:
The public statements were sufficiently short on details .
Click to expand...
-----
I'd wager that they DO have a business plan, because otherwise the investors would
probably not have agreed to fund them for another year or two.
-----
You wager, but you don't know IF the have a plan, they did not say so. Why ?To me it sounds more that they try to tart up that ruin and find a nerd who buys it. For that they need TIME.

-----
What they're going to release to the public however is generally rather vague, but it does confirm that they do plan on developing a strong portfolio of digital imaging products
------

Vague it is indeed, too vague for stockholders, and it confirms nothing. They say nothing about strong portfolios, they only announce that they will l give up their "keep-off-hands.from-digital" policy.So what,no news either , the digital back for the R is there already. There are NO essential news at all.
Just a blahblah-message which one can interpret, like the Oracle of Dephi. Maybe intentive.

Regards,
Bertram
 
Bertram2 said:
You wager, but you don't know IF the have a plan, they did not say so. Why ?To me it sounds more that they try to tart up that ruin and find a nerd who buys it. For that they need TIME.
Click to expand...

There are two choices: the investors who are willing to give them money through 2006 are
total imbeciles, or Leica showed them a business plan.

Vague it is indeed, too vague for stockholders, and it confirms nothing. They say nothing about strong portfolios, they only announce that they will l give up their "keep-off-hands.from-digital" policy.So what,no news either , the digital back for the R is there already. There are NO essential news at all.
Just a blahblah-message which one can interpret, like the Oracle of Dephi. Maybe intentive.
Click to expand...

In their newsletter, they described in general terms what they plan to do, and it makes sense.
There are no details in it, to be sure, but that's standard business practice. There was some
essential news in there, including the fact that they plan to dedicate (and hire) more resources
for digital imaging products, cut their inventory in half, and do some reorganizing. So yes,
they did give out some useful information.

That should actually be sufficient for most stockholders, particularly if they are holders of non-
voting stock.

Now let's see what happens with Leica when they try executing this plan of theirs.
 
I have to say that I am surprised that there was no direct mention of their partner- Panasonic (Matsushita). Leica has a very nice relationship with them. I would have thought that someone at Leica would have made a bigger deal out of it.

Is it because Leica strictly views "Made in Germany" as part their brand/gestalt? If so, that could be very short sighted in the current economy. Leica makes excellent lenses for Panasonic, I suspect Panasonic has supplied some very nice electronics to Solmes. From where I sit, German and Japanese manufacturing has been top notch in many market segments. Why not just give in to a healthy relationship? I don't think that anyone outside of a few die hard Leica-philes will give a damn, as long as Leica continues to create an excellent product.

I don't own a Leica, but I sure do respect the quality. I for one would hate to see it die as a result of short sighted market views.

Bob H
 
tamerlin said:
There are two choices: the investors who are willing to give them money through 2006 are
total imbeciles, or Leica showed them a business plan.
s.
Click to expand...

As i said: To me it sounds more that they try to tart up that ruin and
find a nerd who'willing to buy it.
And this would be a plan too, wouldn't it ?
Regards,
Bertram
 
Bertram2 said:
As i said: To me it sounds more that they try to tart up that ruin and
find a nerd who'willing to buy it.
And this would be a plan too, wouldn't it ?
Click to expand...

In other words, you think their investors are complete imbeciles. Either way, I'm fairly certain that
you're wrong.

Having a plan does not, however mean anything if they fail to execute, or if their cost estimates are
too optimistic.
 
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