Despite Awful Performance, Martha Stewart Contract Extended
It must be nice to be a founder. Despite a horrible performance, both financially and for shareholders, Martha Stewart was given a contract extension to act as founder and chief creative officer through June 30, 2017. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (NYSE: MSO) and…
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Over the course of the past five years, Martha Stewart shares have fallen from almost $16 to $3.56.
The company’s growth also has died. In the most recently reported quarter, revenue fell to $49.8 million from $52.7 million in the same period a year ago. The corporation lost $3.6 million.
Martha Stewart gave COO Lisa Gersh “a restricted stock unit award in respect of 64,395 shares of MSLO Class A Common Stock.” Part of the reason for this was “her role in consummating the transactions with J. C. Penney Corporation, Inc.” The deal involved JCPenney (NYSE: JCP) buying 16% of MSO, and creating a retail partnership between the companies.
But, JCPenney sales have collapsed since the arrival of new CEO Ron Johnson. And, Macy’s (NYSE: M) filed a lawsuit in January that accuses Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia of violated a preexisting contract. Nice work by Gersh, but will the company take the shares back if Macy’s wins the suit?
Douglas A. McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.