RE:RE:RE:Sell QuarterhillThe board knows they have to get it right with the next CEO. If I had to hazard a quess, I would say that the board did not clearly set the priorities correctly i.e. operational efficiency should have been highlighted as a much higher priority than M&A. I know when I listened in on the quarterly calls, much of the discussion was related to M&A. I expect that the future quarterly calls will be much more focused on operational efficiencies similar to the way Wednesday's Q4 call was.
Since Brett Kidd came with ETC, I'm not surprised that the board thought he could deliver the expected operational efficiencies. The board gave Brett 15 months to execute before making a change. That's not an unreasonable time.
Cabbie has said the typicall time to recruite a CEO is 6 to 9 months. In the meantime, I expect John Gillberry and the board will not be sitting still and will be working closely with ETC management to improve operational efficiency. On the Q4 call, John said that $4 million in operational cost savings had already been implemented. As well, John said that the board is providing detailed oversight of operational costs. On the Q1 call, I expect statements on further operational cost efficiencies.
One final comment. John said that the size of the implementation costs incurred in Q4 were an anomoly and weren't expected to repeat in future quarters. Clearly we need to see that with the Q1 results but if John is correct, the market's reaction to Q4 is excessive.