Testing times ahead for Linn

Those profits are tiny for a company that size.

I know of engineering consultancies with less than 4 men that make similar profits...
 
Don't know why but I expected Naim to this sort of announcement before Linn. I thought Linn had invested much more heavily into the multi-channel (God I hate this term, even stereo is technically multi-channel!) products than Naim. Not that I'm biased in favour of either.
 
Indeed - hard to have much sympathy for them given their exploitation of customers and over priced under performing products.
 
Ever ready to put a nail in a coffin then?

It's a shame when any company starts to struggle. Have you no thought for the 280 people wondering about their futures?

Do you intend to come across as smug, patronising and uncaring?
 
"Them" being linn as an entity not its poor employees. Ultimately linn dug their own grave. I have sympathy for the workers - but the workers are not "linn" in this sense.
 
Linn need to move downmarket to the B&O segment and offshore most production to Asia (flatpack the famous factory and ship it to Shenzen, perhaps). They also need Linn branded TVs / Internet appliances.
Moving up from where they are now is the province of very small companies and very strange consumer behaviors that seem quite at odds with Linn's "engineering led" approach.
 
Nick, I don't understand your "reasoning". Linn's turnover last year was £32million, so they are still selling a lot of products. For that amount of their profits were not good enough and as any good company they are probably just looking to maximise their profits by cutting costs, if they can't do it by increasing sales. It doesn't necessarily mean that "linn has dug their own grave".
 
Turnover isnt the be all and end all. I doubt they have any costs left to cut given far east competition.
 
I have a sneaky suspicion that you knew that my point was that turnover equates to sales, i.e. their products are selling well and the redundancies are a way to cut costs;).
 
Two questions:

(1) How much do the directors pay themselves, in fees and perks and have these stipends decreased lately in line with the decrease in profitability?

(2) How much does the CEO screw out of the directors, and has his/her salary plus perks decreased lately in line with the decrease in profitability?
 
"Linn need to move downmarket to the B&O segment and offshore most production to Asia (flatpack the famous factory and ship it to Shenzen, perhaps)"

That won't help most of the employees : see Rover
 
Linn and Rover isn't that fair a comparison. Did Rover management really try to save their company? If so, they used a very well tried and trusted formula of awarding themselves huge pay rises and pensions (better salaries than the management at their former owners was getting IIRC). Well done guys:rolleyes:
 
the rover guys came in to rob the pension, land owned and IP, nothing else.

a snapshot of linns profit on trading last year shows nothing, they could have invested 5 million in training and equipment that year,you don't know without looking at the accounts.

but that snapshot is handy for using if you finally want to move production offshore and are looking for something to blame..

theres two options here, either linn are on their knees and need to move offshore and drop jobs to protect the future of the company. by 'company' i mean the trading entity.

or they just want to make it look like that so they don't suffer from customer bad will when they flip the bird to the majority of their 280 employees and continue trying to sell 20 minutes of cnc work on a die cast block for £2000.

what do you think is the truth? they can't make any money on 32 million turnover, or they think they can make more by going offshore but find themselves in a PR nightmare if they flip off 280 loyal trusted staff.

anything is possible.
 
the reality is mfg costs in the UK are too high. Makes financial sense to mfg in China. Nearly everyone else is.

Who's next? Meridian? Naim?

Loyalty rarely figures in these equations. Do it or die tryin.
 
Dev - I can sell ten pound notes for a fiver all day long. Turnover doesnt matter. The keel is the last act of a desperate company.
 
I'd be very surprised if Linn genuinely believed that the Keel is going to make a significant difference to their fortunes. I think some of the comments here are a bit premature, i.e. I don't think that the announcement necessarily means that Linn is in trouble. FWIW I agree with Joel's comments. I think Linn needs to cater for the "iPod/Squeezebox" generation rather than go even more upmarket chasing wealthier but fewer customers. But hey, what do I know, I'm sure Linn know their customer profile better than I ever could.

BTW, selling tenners for a fiver will result in you losing money, Linn haven't yet reported a loss, so in their case turnover of £32million must mean that they are still selling products, albeit at relatively low margins.

I could mention a number of large corporations that seem to re-structure themselves on a regular basis. This in itself does not mean that they are in trouble, just trying to make the best returns for their shareholders.
 

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