Shares of Quiksilver Inc. fell more than 15 percent, below the $2 mark, after the company ended Andy Mooney’s tumultuous two-year-plus tenure as chief executive officer and promoted Pierre Agnes, the company’s president, to the post.
Bob McKnight, who founded the company in 1970 and took it public in 1986, has returned to Quiksilver as chairman after retiring less than five months ago. He had remained a director of the company since retiring, at which time Mooney succeeded him as chairman. Agnes will fill Mooney’s spot on the board.
Succeeding Agnes as president is Greg Healy, who was most recently president of the Asia-Pacific region for the Huntington Beach, Calif.-based surf, skate, sportswear and footwear firm.
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Additionally, Thomas Chambolle, currently chief financial officer of the Europe-Middle East-Africa region, has been promoted to cfo of the company. His predecessor, Richard Shields, will stay on in a consulting role.
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McKnight Friday credited Mooney with “driving the organizational changes that were essential to restoring our product design leadership and globalizing many of our key functions.”
Even with Quiksilver’s “revenue cut-off issue” earlier this month, which led to a minor restatement of its 2014 financial results, sources characterized Mooney’s dismissal as a shift toward a greater emphasis on its core market of action sports retailers and execution, as opposed to the sporting goods and strategic focus embraced by Mooney.
“The board felt that Andy was great with strategy, but it had some stars internally in terms of execution and they felt that’s where they needed to be focused now,” Jeff Van Sinderen, analyst at B. Riley & Co. in Los Angeles, told WWD. “Pierre has been there for a long time — 27 years — and is highly respected.”
Mooney came to Quiksilver with a pedigree that included management roles at Disney Consumer Products and Nike.
Among the priorities for the new management team, in addition to cementing relationships with skate and surf shops and other active merchants who helped build the company’s Quiksilver, Roxy and DC Shoes brands to prominent positions, are improving a number of the company’s operational basics — including on-time delivery, inventory management and selling — in North America.
But even with guidance suggesting an improvement in top-line results in the fiscal year that began Nov. 1, Quiksilver faces an uphill battle in its turnaround efforts. Last year, the firm lost $309.4 million, including $178.2 million in pretax goodwill impairment charges, as revenues fell 13.3 percent to $1.57 billion. The net loss was revised to $308.2 million Friday, as the company submitted restated figures to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company has also been under pressure to pursue strategic alternatives, including a possible sale, and those pressures are unlikely to abate, sources familiar with the board’s view said.
Activist investor Ryan Drexler of Consac LLC, who had earlier agitated for changes at Bebe Stores Inc., urged the company in October to consider a sale through a competitive bidding process and described Mooney’s turnaround plan as a “failure.”
McKnight announced his now-interrupted retirement soon thereafter and pronounced himself “fully supportive of Andy’s elevation to chairman and delighted with Pierre’s appointment as president.”
Calls seeking comment from Quiksilver’s management weren’t returned.
With Friday’s stock slide, which saw shares descend 35 cents, or 15.6 percent, to $1.90, the company’s market capitalization continued a battering that goes back to early 2014. Since the end of 2013, shares have fallen 78.3 percent and market cap has dropped to $325.3 million.
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