Strategy in TECH...
Sonos, Inc. (Nasdaq: SONO) released its financial results for the third quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, which included a double-digit percentage revenue decline and a significant net loss in the millions of dollars. Yet Sonos management declared victory with new CEO Tom Conrad calling the quarter a “…solid step forward for Sonos,” and CFO Saori Casey joining in by saying, “Q3 was another quarter of solid execution…”
Are we watching the same movie here?
After markets closed on Tuesday, Masimo Corporation [Nasdaq: MASI] released its results for the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, and to my eyes, they looked really solid. Revenues grew by a respectable 8%, operating profits grew by 54%(!), operating margins improved by 520 basis points (that’s 5.2% more than last year), and earnings per share shot up an eye-popping 78%(!) What’s not to like?
Yet on Wednesday, the first trading day after these results were announced, the value of MASI shares actually dropped 12%! What?!?!
Enigmatic, mercurial CEO Elon Musk confirmed to Reuters news that Tesla has signed a deal with Samsung Electronics to manufacture and supply Tesla’s next-generation AI chips, the AI6. The contract is said to be valued at $16.5 billion.
Gentex Corporation (Nasdaq: GNTX) has reported its financial results for the second quarter of Fiscal 2025, the 90-day period that ended on June 30, 2025. For the most part, results looked better than initially expected, although much of the upside improvement in revenues was largely thanks to the acquisition of VOXX Int’l, the company that owns audio brands Onkyo, Integra, and Klipsch as well as other automotive electronics brands. That acquisition closed on April 1, the first day of the second quarter.
However, the profit contribution of VOXX was a different story.
She was a fresh-faced, 20-something college student in the late 1980s when, on a brief pause from her university studies, EveAnna Dauray took a job on the production floor at Vacuum Tube Logic, a high-end audio company in California run by David Manley and his son Luke. There is no way she could have known it at the time, but she was about to embark on a crazy, exciting, at times painful, though always rewarding, epic journey. It was a journey that spanned some four decades and would see her rise from an entry-level production floor worker to owner and President of Manley Laboratories, Inc. (a company split off and independent from VTL), which she recently successfully sold to industry entrepreneur Dirk Ulrich…achieving the American Dream by providing her with the resources and the freedom to pursue with passion the next exciting phase of her life’s journey.
Two major South Korean tech behemoths, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, have released preliminary reports on their financial results for the second quarter of fiscal 2025, and these results paint a troubling portrait of a changing trade environment where declining profits and softening consumer demand foretell a challenging road ahead. Both companies reported modest revenue declines and more dramatic operating profit declines as each scrambles to adjust operations for a challenging business environment.
One of the remarkable stories to emerge from the demise of high-end loudspeaker brand THIEL Audio, which went out of business in 2018, was the phoenix-like rising of THIEL Service from the ashes of the bankrupt company. Long-time head of service Rob Gillum, sensing the continuing needs of a significant installed base of THIEL owners, purchased service-connected assets out of the bankrupt company and launched the independent Coherent Source Service (CSS), a full-fledged repair center dedicated to servicing the ongoing needs of THIEL legacy model owners everywhere.
Now, in the wake of Rob Gillum’s recent retirement, CSS has been acquired by Gary Dayton, another long-time THIEL service executive (trained by Gillum), who seeks to carry on the mantle of offering THIEL owners ongoing exceptional service of THIEL legacy products.
We got a blockbuster announcement late this afternoon as AVPro Global announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Remote Technologies Incorporated (RTI), a well-known control and automation solutions provider for residential and commercial markets. AVPro Global is the parent company of AVPro Edge, AudioControl Pro, Bullet Train, Murideo, and ThenAudio and is an industry-leading provider of AV signal distribution solutions in the residential and commercial integration spaces.
With the addition of RTI, the company makes a bold move into the control and automation space and ties together its expanding universe of sector-specific brands.
Sonance, a leading innovator of custom integration solutions founded more than four decades ago when it was instrumental in creating and growing the overall custom integration industry – continues to fuel its own forward momentum, announcing this week the acquisition of Blaze Audio, a significant innovator of premium high-performance amplifiers and sound reinforcement speakers out of Copenhagen, Denmark.
This move represents a significant expansion of Sonance’s Pro Audio division.
Last week, Masimo Corporation (Nasdaq: MASI) finally announced the long-anticipated sale of its Masimo Consumer division – the audio division created after its acquisition of Sound United back in February 2022 – to Harman International Industries Incorporated. Harman is a division of Samsung Electronics with a large automotive electronics business, along with professional audio and high-end audio businesses as well.
But is this truly a good home for Sound United?
