Gibson Brands CEO Responds to Moody’s Downgrade
The music industry is positively buzzing about the announcement late last week by Moody’s Investors Service that, for the second time in three months, it has downgraded the credit rating of Nashville, Tennessee-based Gibson Brands. Gibson (formerly Gibson Guitars) is a tightly held private company that launched an aggressive diversification strategy a few years ago, focusing on acquiring several consumer electronics brands such as Onkyo Corp. and Teac, Corp. and recently Philips.
Apple, Inc. is starting to look brown, bruised, and past its prime in wake of the surprising quarterly results that showed growth in sales of their bellwether iPhone product to be the slowest since the company launched the product category in 2007. Not only that, but the company forecast an overall sales decline for the first quarter of 2016 – their first sales decline since 2003. Reaction from Wall Street was swift with the price of Apple stock down more than 6% in mid-afternoon trading.
CES is back and its bigger than ever. According to the CTA (formerly CEA), the show spans 2.3 million sq.ft. of exhibit space, in which more than 3,600 exhibitors of all sizes and types have set up booths to hawk their wares. The show is expected to draw more than 150,000 attendees and 6,000 member of the press. It is impossible to cover the entire event…it has just gotten too large.
