Motorola: Dead Company Walking?

Motorola (MOT), once one of the great American companies, appears to be in a death cycle. Its stock is at a five-year low, its market share is sinking like a phone thrown overboard, and its product line seems to be behind the times. Analysts are dropping support for Motorola, the company's debt ratings are going through the floor, and it can't recruit top talent.

It all adds up to a sad scenario that seems destined to end with Motorola going the way of one-time icons like RCA, Westinghouse, and U.S. Steel. If Carl Icahn thought booting Ed Zander from the CEO job was going to fix anything, he was clearly mistaken.

On Glassdoor.com, the input from Motorola employees is brutal.

From a senior project coordinator:

 

There are probably too many downsides to express in this review. There is high stress level due to the fact that no one knows from day to day if they will have a job even if they are a top performing employee.

 

From a software engineer: 

 

Motorola is huge into cost cutting right now. It seems that cost cutting is our actual product. It makes me wonder that if we are so bent on cutting costs then are we going to say no to the right projects that will help make money in the end?

 

From a senior quality engineer:

 

Please force out these dinosaur managers who have no grasp of technology! According to reports, our current CEO does not even use email. The previous CEO, Ed Zander, let the company become a laughingstock with its RAZR phones.

 

From an anonymous employee:

 

Tough times for the company have lead to a stressful work environment with employees and resources stretched very thin. Lost the creative edge from years past. Poor middle management in general. Very few managers are truly decisive leaders - they are unwilling to take any chances and risks and prefer to follow the herd.

 

CEO Greg Brown has one of the lowest internal approval ratings of any CEO reviewed on Glassdoor, at 19%. Employee satisfaction runs at a low 2.7 on a scale of 1 to 5. Unless something radical happens, Motorola's days of being a great company are done.

Comments

[lakeside]

"According to reports, our current CEO does not even use email. " I don't know if that's accurate, but I am amazed at the number of millionaire investors/CEOs who are over the age of 65 etc, who don't use e-mail -- or at least are reported not to. But I am amazed at how fast a good company can go bad.

[TinyTim]

The sad part are the promises made to employees in Moto's heyday. Similarly to IBM, Moto promised continuous employment to anyone loyal enough to stay 10 years and join the "service club", also known as being "galvinized" after the founding family, the Galvins. People naive enough (like me & many others) to believe this stayed and probably limited career growth during prime employment years for the sake of mutual loyalty only to get downsized with no mention of the service club.
My severence check is tacked to my service club plaque.
My kids have been warned about false promises from companies.
The dinosaur days when job hopping was a stigma are long gone. Now, it's show me the money or I head for greener pastures.

[Former Employee]

I was one of the ones to be cost cut. They cut good people just to make numbers. How do you stay in business if you let good people go just to make the numbers look good? The people that are left have no clue what to do. The people that should be cut are the senior leadership team. Talk about dinosaurs. The problem is that the packages would be steep. It might not save anything for a year if they were let go today.

[RPK]

The last I checked U.S. Steel or United States Steel (X) is still around and iis an approximately a $20+ billion company. The stock price increased greater than 50% a year since 2006.

Regarding Motorola, strip out is handset division and the company is profitable. Motorola has three choices, (1) invest capital and try to regain profitability, (2) sell the division, (3) spin the division off as a stand alone company. Based upon public comments from the company number (3) is the most probable.

[Texrat]

This is very sad to watch.

[carolien8]

this is exactly the kind of supreme bearish thinking that defines a bottom - which means that this stock will now probably start to trade higher...

[stray_bullet]

Buffet says it best - "Be greedy when others are fearful. Be fearful when others are greedy".

You should do your DD as the same would not have worked for Alcatel, Lucent, NT etc. I am currently buying at these levels and will continue to buy as it falls. Motorola is pretty diversified into its business set, including Public Safety. Do not discount the radio division. Motorola is not all handsets - they are a significant part yes, but to think that it is all handsets and value the rest of the profitable divisions would be a mistake. Don't forget that they 3$ of the $7.40 stock price is cash.

[inside]

There is no recognizable strategy to turn the company around. Even a dead cat has elasticity going for it to make it bounce.

[TinyTim]

RPK-
Last I heard, Icahn forced the spinoff of the handset division a month ago after Moto's unsuccessfull attempts to sell it. It will get ground into dust.

The two remaining units-cell phone infrastructure and first responder radios - are profitable. The 2-way radios are back to Moto's core business in the 30's. Not sure how much innovation is left in the hulk with all the talent gone.
I would expect these two units to get purchased in a battle with management. Otherwise, be prepared to wait a while for this one to come out of a dive.

[SysEng]

The engineering charm of the company is gone. Gone are the days of innovation. Now for each project, there is a manager, about ten "project managers" and one engineer doing actual work. I write this as I sit at my cube, with no incentive to "go above and beyond" my responsibilities.

[MOTOROLA HEADED FOR BAD DAY]

I currently work for Motorola and am attempting to finish my MBA before the company folds. People need to realise that in order to set Mobile devices up as an independent comapany they would need $4 billion dollars from our sigma fund which currently sits at $7.7B to survive two years on its own. At the rate the company is going it may not be able to split Mobile Devices until JUN 09. At the rate they are going MD is lossing $400M a quarter and will lose another $400M at the end of this 2nd quarter. In 4 more quarters that adds up to a $2B loss counting end Q2 08. This will leave the company with only $5B in the sigma fund and if it has to give MD $4B to float for 2 years that will leave $1.7B for the rest of the company which does not work. The GPS and CHS devisions are profitable but only account for 50% of Motorola's overal sales. Their profit margins are also becomming less and less and can not float Mobile Devices. No more MD and you can kiss good bye to half the comapny.

As for our Sr Managers, Directors, Excecs.... the only thing that they seem to care about is cutting cost... and instead of cutting the unproductive people that need to go .... they cut productive emplyees.....

Can anyone say Alcatel Lucent??? This is what Motorola will be in 2 years.... ran into the ground by execs that had no clue and initialed a 11 Billion dollar stock buy back in 2005 instead of investing the money. They actaull spent 7.7Billion buying back stock when it was in the $20's a share.... and in DEC 07 I went to a town hall with our former CFO Tom Merrideth and he quote said that at $19 a share our stock was undervalued and he believed it was worth $40 a share and to tell your friends and family to by MOT stock" he was forced to resign the following month.... and by the way he got a big $$$ going away present.....

[another engineer]

Mot can still turn around. As said multiple times in the comments, two of the three mot divisions are profitable. That diversity will keep Mot in business until the handset division gets its act together. I don't expect Mobile Devices to match Nokia or Samsung margins, but they can make a profit in the handset business. I hope that MDB can at least break even in the last half of 2008.
As for cost cutting, there are large numbers being layed off, but I don't hear anything about executives offering to reduce their compensation. Mr. Brown has in fact been given even more personal hours on the corporate Jets... I believe Steve Jobs makes $1 per year in salary. Of course he is compensated in stock and is rewarded when Apple does well. Where is this kind of personal risk from the Mot Management? Instead, they sit back and suck down money with no real risk of failure.

[StarBus]

I am not a MOTO employee, but I am a major shareholder. I have lost so much on paper that I don't see any point in jumping ship (Spare me the rhetoric. I know the drill: "The decision to stay invested should be based on future expectation and not past performance"). But there is also some serious potential here due to the recent toll of dour market expectations...

While it's not clear if Motorola will bounce back to its glory days, it is far from an RCA, Westinghouse or even Digital Equipment. It has a patent portfolio, a pile of cash, and a even some future phones that quicken the pulse. Anecdotally, I know a few people who have figured out that Motorola phones make calls from more places, because they understand antennas, amplifiers (gain, feedback, selectivity, rejection) better than anyone else. I would love a fancy Apple, but the truth is the v710 and E815 can pull in a signal on an underground freight train. But try taking a Samsung into a mall, under a tree, in a parking garage, in a cellar... What do you get? A music player!

Call me by my pen name "Ellery Davies"
You'd have to hunt pretty deep and wild to figure out who I am, but it ain't top secret. My real name is known to some.

[Software Developer]

I worked at Motorola for 8 years, during the telecom boom. It was a greate place to work. I left due to the company was lacking of a real, new product. Also, the company was more intereset in how to get rid of engineers instead of promoting innovation and crativity.. I feel realy sad to hear bad new about it. I hope I could have a magic wand and fix things up.

[punk_ash]

I have given around 10 years of my best years, and I left some yeas ago, but I have to say that the product development experience you could learn at Motorola is second to none, if I were to do it all over again, I would do it again. Besides the experience I got, everything else was just bad, it really depresses you when you see really foolish people as your boss's boss's boss, some one I would not even hire for just about anything. There was a lot of talent, the best I have ever seen anywhere, but then there are a lot of people whose sole business is to fly to Europe on some pretext or another, make themselves visible, collect bonuses and get promotions while the people doing the real work rotted in the labs. I never liked Zander from day 1, just look at his record at Sun, he made a lot of money and destroyed this great company. By the way, the guy who did Razr is said died of too much work and his wife killed herself soon after. That is how Motorola rewarded talent. I went phone shopping recently and the best phone I thought was a Motorola and I bought a couple, its amazing Motorola still makes the best handsets but they cannot sell them. If you go inside, you will see a lot of directors and they are all sitting on their desktops doing I don't know what.

It was the greatest technology company in the history of the world just 20 short years back and now it is just a laughing stock of people.

How could Motorola innovate when managers spend 90% of their time playing politics and the engineers reinventing the wheel just because the managers were too busy screwing around rather than create value.

Motorola has done a great service to mankind by inventing the wireless, but it is going to end up like RCA/Zenith/westinghous... Some comments say that the other sectors are healthy, I disagree, since the base station division has been doing poorly for as long as I can remember.

Motorola got hot by Nokia in 1995 time frame and has never really recovered, and the only thing it ever did was Razr and all the cash it has is attributed to Razr. The spirit of Motoroa will live on through people who have taken the skills from it and joined other companies.

[punk_ash]

I am posting yet again to wishful thinkers who think mot is going to bounce. True Mot will keep bouncing until it does not. Just look at the stock price, I think it is at a 15 year low, who is to say that it will not hit a 25 year low. The kind of hunger, determination and vigor needed to succeed in today's telecom market is just not achievable by Moto. There are too may sharp players, they are hungry and they are ambitious and they are innovating. The kind of phones motorola makes now are selling for $30 in Asia. Each VP sucks in $30 in about 12 minutes.

[Moto95]

I echo punk_ash. I spent 11 years with Motorola and the engineering experience there is second to none. The place was once full of talents and perhaps the best place to work. Questionable leadership has steered the ship in the wrong direction. Motorola is for innovation and engineering. Motorola must go back to its root. Short sight on cost cutting thru careless outsourcing has caused more harms to the company. Don't treat engineers as production workers but value them for their creativity and dedication. Motorola has lost lots of them. It's time to go back to its root where the answer is. I wish Motorola will make a come back. Motorola was the place I was once proud to work for with so many good engineers.

[Life after MOTOROLA]

While you all cry the blues, some of you who should be working instead of writing here. That includes the moron who wrote this comment “Ellery Davies"
You'd have to hunt pretty deep and wild to figure out who I am, but it ain't top secret. My real name is known to some. No body gives a crap who you are, who wants to figure it out anyway, you’re a shareholder, we all were at one point, get over it!!!
I spent 24 years working for Motorola, 2 years before retirement and got canned instead of the lazy asses I worked with, why because I made more money than them because my reviews were better than theirs were, because I cared and look what it got me!
Who ever is running the show now; you are all screwed, the places they need to cut is all the fat head managers, high up managers, the ones you never see, the ones you have no idea how the hell they got the job in the first place and have no idea what the hell they do. They spent all that money to send production to Mexico and it takes them 6 weeks to do what the small people did in 3 days. I guess you get what you pay for!
Not to worry, there is life after Motorola. But it is too late for the poor eng that shot himself a few years ago because his boss gave him a bad review for working hard, but it seems personnel says you must rate a certain percentage. That should be one manager that is canned. Good Luck to those that are left, however I sorry there is nothing left for you. It was a nice place to work a long time ago.

[ED: Comment edited to remove abuse.]

[Optimistic]

Yes, there is life after Motorola however, Motorola was my life for over 25 years and, they were some of the best years of my life. It was such a terrific company to work for. I was dedicated in helping to make it successful, as were the majority of the employees in those days. We all worked as a team, striving for the same goals together and, achieving them together. We were all one big happy family in those days. We accepted the changes because we trusted management due to the fact we all had one common goal, making Motorola successful, emphasizing on delivering quality products on time, everytime. Motorola went through a lot of changes and we were always supportive of them. The tables turned when Motorola started cutting the dedicated people out of the picture, sending products offshore and, hiring temps. Downsizing became the goal. Yes, we saw many changes that were not for the good of Motorola or, the dedicated people that worked there.

I still truely believe that one day the right person will be chosen to lead the company out of this disaster. Go back to the Paul and Bob Galvin philosophy because, it truely worked and, I am sure it could work again. People haven't changed, Motorola has. Motorola has lost the idea that their employees can help make this happen. Build the trust back up, keep the products in the United States and, do it together.

[PinkMot]

I must first start off by saying Mot was a great place to work back in the day. I actually left on my own because there was no future for bright, talented people there. It was all about numbers...never to help the employee move ahead and learn and actually help the company. It was about how many computers the managers could buy from the department money so they could supply their families with numerous laptops and expensive video cameras. Don't forget to use my corprate card to buy that stuff....so I get the miles so when I go on a Motorola paid trip I can bring my girlfriend with me! But don't tell the wife! Don't forget to put all of those dinners and strip clubs and bar tabs on my expense report under TAXI'S!!!!!!!!!!! I think I need to go to Mexico for vacation....oppps I mean a business trip. Sir...can I go to this meeting with the department so I can learn about what is going on???? Boss....but I have a really good ideas. NO NO Little worker bee you must stay here and do as I say...you can not learn MORE then I already know! Then I could not keep being the manager, they would surely see that I am a fraud...I steal other peoples ideas and innovations. No No sit at your desk and be quiet.
Oh goodness. I am hungry....wow! let's hold a meeting so the department will pay for our lunch! Freakin' brilliant!
Now you all sit here and say "why is Motorola going down?" Here is the painful truth, my friends. It's who is kissing the bigger managers ass! It has nothing to do with the thousands of talented people who have worked very hard there for many years. I know it will take majic to make this company come back and believe me.....I know MAJIC!!!!

[creegah]

Same complaints I heard in 1975. Not similar, exactly the same. And, mostly by engineers. Poor sensitive boys who did not get their egos stroked enough.

[freightbusters]

I was thinking about that article...all the way home....

I just think that it goes a lot deeper than all the stuff you mention the directors...the ego starved engineers..the complaining materials people....

a lot deeper......like the letter you wrote to Galvin.....I know you had a lot more to say than just the amount of directors we had....we all had a lot,,,,,,, to be said..but we did not........

We had a lot more to share of what was on our mine that may have changed the course of this company......concerned... guts? ...scared?.....who would listen.?......sure!!!!... we had familys..play time.... a regular check for 34 yrs.....never a miss...never a miss when I wanted to take a vacation....the opportunity to take responsibioity....alwa...

Its a lot deeper......why were we holding back.....did we...

You and I sink the "ghost .ship"

[Diggler]

I've been working at MOT for nearly 8 years. Our department has had about as many heads and they have all failed. My coworkers are great, but the upper managers have no idea of the talent they have. They'd much rather farm out the guts of our project overseas to people who don't care about quality, don't know about programming and simply want to get paid. It's really a joke and I'm just waiting for someone to finally go, "Hey this department is hemorrhaging money. I'm going to cut it off completely." As painful as that would be at least it would be honest. Wouldn't that be a nice change? A little honesty. Our town halls are like a trip to Dunkin Donuts. Everything is sugar coated. My department has some very talented people. All we want is to produce some exceptional software. It is too bad the upper management is only worried about the bottom line. Btw, I do not work in the mobile phone division. Thanks for letting me rant.

[Life after MOTOROLA]

I Don't know about you guys but I did write to Mr. Galvin... Boy they called me so fast is wasn't funny. I said everything I had to say, and it felt GOOD too,I did't care either I was just a peon in the factory. Nothing was ever done who ever is running the show must have good looking paperwork! It always looks better on paper, just like when the new products came down to the line, it always looked good on paper and when the peons in the factory tried to show them it wasn't working it didn't matter cause the paperwork looked good. And whoever said they dont' help the smart and talented employees get ahead. You couldn't be more right, they always told me on my reviews how good I was..blah, blah, blah. Well my friends when my days at Motorola ended 3 or 4 years ago after 24 years of stuggling to get a better postion.. I am now in managment! On an upscale not It use to be a pleasure to work there, maybe it was because I didn't know better 24 years ago. Chins up my friends your turn is coming.

[Life after MOTOROLA]

Hey if the things that everyone is saying is not bad enough check this out… I had applied for a job via the I.S.O. and when it was time for the manager to interview me this is what happen and this is word for word…” Hello (my name) you have very good qualifications for this job, you have everything I am looking for, can you tell me what department you are working in now?” Yes I work in Spectra for (supervisor’s name) “You work in the factory?” “Yes, the back end.” This is the best part….” I do not want any factory people in my office.” This is what caused me to write Mr. Galvin.
Can you believe that? I guess I wasn’t as stupid as he thought considering the potion I have now. Management!!!!
All of you talented people don’t take their crap; if you got it use it! You will find someone who will appreciate you and what you have to offer.

[User 225215]

I worked there for over 37 years. Got nabbed in the 2001 downturn. The company started going down hill once Chris was given control. He made too many mistakes that were very costly.
Too many lazy managers that were only interested taking care of themselves with no regard for those around them. I knew one manager that worked he way up through the ranks then spent most of her day hanging out at the gym or socializing with those higher up that could help her move up effortlessly.

Mot was a good place to work in the 60's, 70's and 80's. I would like to see them get a good CEO that was not driven to generating his golden parachute but to grow the company and its employees.