![]() It was the decision to leave the consumer photo business that was the most traumatic for Bell & Howell. The number of different businesses at Bell & Howell has been axed to five from 32, and worldwide employment has fallen to 11,000 from 14,000. Frey, a tough-talking former Ford Motor Company executive who took charge in 1971, roughly 80 percent of the assets then in place have been sold or written off. ''They have got research expertise in an area where Bell & Howell has just never been a player,'' said Ty Govatos at the Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corporation.īy any measure, however, the change at Bell & Howell since the early 1970's has been remarkable. Some said that in microimagery - the microfilm readers and printer that are the company's biggest revenue source - Bell & Howell's research lags that of the Eastman Kodak Company and the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. Not all analysts are enthusiatic about the company's new ventures. In 1982, the company had earnings of $18.5 million, or $3.28 a share, on sales of $611.8 million but, after a $21.5 million write-off, reported a net loss of $2.9 million. However, Bell & Howell has suffered net losses in two of the last five years. That compared with earnings of $3.5 million, or 62 cents a share, on the sales of $151 million in the similar 1982 period. In its second fiscal quarter, the three months ending June 30, Bell & Howell earned $11 million, or $1.93 a share, on sales of $169.5 million. The company's new ways have also won approval on Wall Street, where the stock price has more than doubled in the last 12 months.ĭuring its restructuring, Bell & Howell's performance has been spotty. Fernandez, an analyst at the First Manhattan Corporation. ![]() ''Bell & Howell has done nothing but winnow and cut and concentrate on businesses in which it has excellent franchises, good positions and high profitability,'' said Brian R. In their stead, it has developed a whole new range of more profitable businesses, including mailing equipment, video cassettes, microfilm products and services, and DeVry. In fact, the company has abandoned virtually all the businesses that nurtured its growth over the decades. Today, however, Bell & Howell is out of the photo business entirely. We're good at it, and they know it.''įor most of this century, the name Bell & Howell - and its Super-8 movie cameras, zoom microphones, and movie projectors - were synonymous with home photography. Now we're in the business of selling graduating students. Frey, Bell & Howell's 60-year-old chairman and chief executive, said of DeVry. ''It's the most successful school of its type in the country,'' Donald N. But Bell & Howell's vow to fight the offer, from the National Education Corporation of Newport Beach, Calif., underscored the fact that the company has taken a new direction. When the Bell & Howell Company announced recently that it had received a takeover inquiry for its DeVry Institute of Technology, a chain of technical schools, the news may have surprised those who still think of the company as a camera manufacturer.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |