yes, there is high sense that management is taking out their mistakes on the employees all the while they stay put...

The Chairman has outlasted how many CEO's and Business Presidents? 

During "normal" times:
The only people that needed to be terminated at Bang & Olufsen are management and CEO. 😕

All the other great people at B&O (like Geoff Martin etc.) are the true assets of that company.

Current Corona situation:
The crisis is (and will be) hard for many many people and it can only be solved together.

kuyttendaele wrote:

The Corona crisis will the end I guess :-(

Totally agree. Lots of companies are going to go under. I was talking to two this morning and one said their landlord refuses to help with their rent and another which is down to a skeleton staff of 2 employees (down from 10), already.

Our sales are down 60% this week. People just aren't spending. People are very very worried about money and their jobs, so won't spend. Totally understandable.

Luxury items such as a B&O product will be low down on the list for many right now, Chinese market gone. This isn't management, it's a reality of the current situation.

Let's hope that the company can survive. However, at some point they could go into receivership. 
Look at the once famous British clothing  brand Jaeger. Went under about 3 years ago. Edinburgh Woollen Mill bought the name from the receiver but no other assets. So a name can live on as a brand but with no  connection to the original company.

Graham

vikinger wrote:

Let's hope that the company can survive. However, at some point they could go into receivership. 

My hunch is, we'll see the world changing once/if we get past this pandemic. Money will be reduced world-over, economies need to rebuild, people still don't know what's happening with their employment and even when things are good again, I can't see consumers heading to the stores en masse to shop like we did before.

I work for online tech companies and even we're 40% down in terms of sales/traffic. And in theory this should go up when people are at home. People are just avoiding consumerism, avoiding spending, avoiding looking at expensive goods.

That's my big fear. I'm seeing people say we just need to endure this for 2-3 months, but even that's a LONG time if you close a company. Wuhan has been in lockdown for over 2 months now, Italy is in its 3 week, UK is heading that way, so is the US. By June the world will feel very different. We have to prep ourselves that B&O won't be around in the short to mid-term. I'd love to be proved wrong, but I think this is the final nail for a lot of companies, even those who only trade online!

Nah, my bet is that most (all?) countries in Europe will hold the lock-down until around Easter.
Reason is simple, most countries will not be able to afford a shutdown of the economy for any longer.
By then some top level EU unit will recommend the countries to lift most of the restrictions and since it is a EU body making the recommendation no individual government can be held responsible.
Convenient way for the leadership in each country...

By that time we will also have better statistics for how many in a population that actually gets affected by the virus and then the true risk between death of patients vs death of the economy can be calculated.
The Chinese numbers, can they be trusted...? Doubtful...

My 2 cents...

My 2 cents is that B&O’s current portfolio is in a better position to weather a downturn. They are still premium but not crazy premium. Also, they are now manufacturing in China which will improve margin. As far as the current health crisis it hasn’t really impacted the economic infrastructure and govt. are pumping in a lot of $ into the economy. As long as B&O can be cash flow positive they will survive. I noticed that even when their revenues were falling significantly their cash flow was only slightly negative. Also their software has gotten much better. Both my A9 and Stage are fantastic values. 

AndersPersson wrote:

Nah, my bet is that most (all?) countries in Europe will hold the lock-down until around Easter. Reason is simple, most countries will not be able to afford a shutdown of the economy for any longer. By then some top level EU unit will recommend the countries to lift most of the restrictions and since it is a EU body making the recommendation no individual government can be held responsible. Convenient way for the leadership in each country...

By that time we will also have better statistics for how many in a population that actually gets affected by the virus and then the true risk between death of patients vs death of the economy can be calculated. The Chinese numbers, can they be trusted...? Doubtful...

My 2 cents...