Wed, Sep 14, 2005
Piper Seemed To Be Doing SO Much Better... So Why The
Switch?
Chuck Suma's
replacement as President and CEO of New Piper Aircraft is raising
eyes and questions throughout the GA community. For the
moment, calls to New Piper's new CEO aren't yet being returned so
the mystery is growing.
Many of the questions center around the plan that Piper's new
CEO, James K. Bass, has for a company that once was one of the
three powerhouses in all of general aviation -- and how and if it
can reclaim former glories. Bass is an experienced exec... having
been CEO of Suntron Corp. from May 2001 to May 2005,
and a former Senior VP at Sony. Bass also served in various
positions in General Electric's aerospace group for some 15
years.
It's Bass' history with Suntron that is causing some
concern -- years in which he shut down several plants and
out-sourced a significant portion of the struggling company to
Mexico -- operations that were then expanded significantly at
the beginning of 2005 (over 300% in terms of available of
manufacturing space). The natural concern with this bit of history
revolves around whether Bass has been brought in to conduct a
similar international move for Piper... which in recent days was
showing strong signs of life and growth and didn't seem to require
such a sudden and unexpected management shift.
New Piper
recorded excellent numbers earlier this year when second
quarter results compiled by GAMA showed an aggressive recovery from
previous lows. First quarter sales of $22 million dollars were
eclipsed by second quarter sales of $35 million (an astounding 66%
boost)... and accompanied by recent agreements that appeared to
indicate that persistent labor problems were on the way to
a resolution. Product enhancements have been
introduced in the form of new Avidyne glass cockpits for the
strong-selling Meridian as well as several other airframes,
while other panel upgrades were expected before the end
of the year. To many, these indicators did not foreshadow the
removal of Suma and the hiring of an outside person to fill the
CEO/Presidential role -- unless big changes, such as a sale of the
company, seemed to be in the cards.
For the moment, it's all guesswork and ANN, like the rest of
aviation, looks forward to hearing what new CEO Bass has in store
for one of the best-known names in GA. We'll keep you up to date as
soon as we have an inkling of what they have in mind. More info to
come...
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