Strategy in TECH...
The Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association (CEDIA) announced at the end of last week that Global President and CEO Tabatha O’Connor will “depart” the organization at the end of her contract period in January. The news caught many by surprise and the organization’s announcement gives no clue as to any of the reasons behind this leadership change.
Emerald Holding, Inc. (Formerly Emerald Expositions Events, Inc.) [NYSE: EEX], the company that owns the CEDIA Expo show and CE Pro, announced last week that its Board of Directors has authorized company managers to purchase up to $20 Million of Emerald’s stock in a share buyback program. As Strata-gee noted back in May in a report on the company’s large fiscal first quarter loss, this program had previously been suspended when cash had tightened up after the cancellation of their events due to COVID-19.
Now the company has been recapitalized, thanks to help from sugar daddy Onex who now owns more than 80% of the company, and – gosh – the stock is so darn cheap. Maybe now is the time to buy…
Kicking off their first ever virtual dealer event called Snap Pro Live, SnapAV unleashes a broad array of new products covering their wide gamut of product and service segments. Snap Pro Live runs for three days and kicked off today (Tuesday) afternoon with a keynote from CEO John Heyman – and this major product launch.
SnapAV kicked off their first major three-day virtual event called Snap Pro Live Tuesday afternoon. In a keynote presentation, SnapAV CEO John Heyman hailed the work of the integrator in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying the dealer “took on the role of a courageous warrior.” And with that, Snap Pro Live was launched offering three full days packed with useful content. (See more details on Snap Pro Live here…)
Sound United announced today that it has closed on its acquisition of Bowers & Wilkins (B&W), as expected. With this deal, B&W is rejoined with Classé – a high-end electronics manufacturer that itself was once part of B&W but then was acquired by Sound United back in Jaunuary 2018.
One of the questions I’m frequently asked is, “When will the economy bounce back to pre-COVID levels so we can all get back to normal?” The answer: We won’t “bounce back” to a pre-pandemic economy, and “normal” won’t be the same. The details on this answer is a topic for another post, but suffice it to say that one of the reasons is due to emerging, unforeseen variables, such as deteriorating employee mental wellbeing issues.
And THAT IS the topic of this post. Two new surveys provide troubling but important data that will impact how – or if – you re-centralize your team…if that’s your plan.
It has been quite the roller coaster ride for housing – first dropping a COVID-driven, eye-popping 30.2% in April to just a 934,000 unit seasonally adjusted annual rate. Then gradually rebounding in May and June…leading to a record 22.6% increase in July.
Now we see a bit of a pause in August, with overall housing starts declining 5.1% to a rate of 1,416,000 units, down from the revised rate of 1,492,000 in July.
Bloomberg News reported late on Monday that Apple is dropping Sonos [NASDAQ: SONO] and other non-Apple branded products from their stores. The news of Sonos losing such a major customer caused their stock to derail in after hours trading, down almost 7% in value at one point. On Tuesday, Sonos stock price closed down 3.2% as Wall Street digested the news.
URC and Somfy announced last week that they have come together in “a new phase of collaboration in smart home automation.” Building on the established strengths of the partners, both URC and Somfy end users will benefit from a seamless integration of Somfy products with URC control solutions.
Emerald Expositions announced today that CEDIA Expo Virtual drew 7,600 trade professional registrations for their three day run from September 15-17, 2020. Although this figure is less than half the attendance at the live, in-person version, Emerald considers it a great success as an all-virtual event.
