Don Smith Stepping Down as Mitel CEO
He'll remain on the board and stay on while a search committee seeks his replacement. The company also announced financials, which were flat.
Mitel today announced that CEO Don Smith will be stepping down, with a search committee to seek his replacement. Smith will remain on Mitel's board after his departure from the CEO position.
The two major events of Smith's tenure were Mitel's acquisition of Inter-Tel in 2007, and its IPO last April. The Inter-Tel purchase was widely lauded as a strong move to complement Mitel's product line and expand its distribution channel in the U.S., as well as give it a path into stronger managed services offering. But the acquisition also was widely viewed as costly at $723 million, coming just over a year before the global economic collapse sent the communications equipment market into a nosedive with the rest of the economy.
The IPO was disappointing, with the share price opening below the price originally set for the offering, and Mitel's stock has fallen since then.
Smith's is actually the second departure of a high-level Mitel executive in recent weeks; last month, the company announced that Richard Dell, the president of Mitel, U.S. was leaving.
The company announced Smith's impending departure along with its fiscal 1Q11 financials, which were essentially flat, as was its guidance for its fiscal 2Q:
--Revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2011 was $160.0 million, compared to $159.4 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2010.
--Adjusted EBITDA (as defined below) for the first quarter of fiscal 2011 was $20.4 million, compared to $19.5 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2010.
--Cash and cash equivalents as of July 31, 2010 were $84.7 million, up 10.6 percent compared to the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010.
--Operating cash flows for the first quarter of fiscal 2011 were $9.6 million, an increase of 12.9 percent from the first quarter of fiscal 2010.
For the second quarter, Mitel is project flat revenue, at $160 million-$163 million.
CFO Steve Spooner's statement in part:
While proud of our achievements during the fiscal quarter, we nonetheless experienced softness in our target markets as the slower than expected economic recovery has continued to limit the SME market's access to credit.
