TechCrunch reports Monster Worldwide (MNST) is laying off 30-35 employees from Tickle, a site it bought in ‘04 for about $94 million. Its future?
The Tickle site will change focus once absorbed by Affinity Labs, although just how is yet to be seen. All layoffs will be complete by the end of June; employees were told of the decision at an internal meeting yesterday.
Remember Monster acquired Affinity Labs for $61 million in cash in January. Moreover, Ringo, a photo and video-sharing site, and LoveHappens, an online dating site – also part of the network – will be shutdown.
This continues a trend at Monster of cost-cutting that apparently isn’t making many friends internally for CEO Sal Iannuzzi.
As a recent anonymous comment alleges, “Yes, profits are up because 1) Sal stopped paying my reps for $400 e-commerce job postings, 2) Sal took away the white out, liquid paper, glue stick, tape and scissors from our desks, 3) Sal no longer pays four of us for teaming on a deal, 4) Sal ran out Monster top sales rep Lieberman, b/c she was stealing all the salt and pepper shakers, and 5) Sal will hire 400 field sales AE from Symbol in the next 40 days … Outsource low, send accounts to India.”
Now, if only the CEO would cut his own salary.
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April 24th, 2008 at 9:37 am
http://seekingalpha.com/article/72439-why-i-m-leery-of-monster?source=yahoo
“Many people would tend to agree – Monster’s already down about 30% since the beginning of 2008.
Some may call that oversold, I call it “the tip of the iceberg.”
If we were simply talking about an equities market “correction,” then I’d say we’ll be coming out of the downturn by the 3rd quarter. But we’re talking about a crisis in the credit markets here – we haven’t had to deal with this since the ’70s and when you stack inflation on top of it we’re looking at a “perfect storm” scenario.
So this isn’t even a matter of performing deep financial analysis or picking apart the chart to identify a pattern. Let’s use some common sense (an underused asset in many investors’ toolboxes) here and see if we can figure out what’s going to happen to Monster…I think asking ourselves a few questions will be a good way to proceed:
Do you think companies are going to be hiring aggressively or laying people off?
Do you think they’re going to want to pay to list their jobs or will they simply use word of mouth to attract the relatively small number of employees they might hire?
Is it a good sign or a bad sign when 3 – 4 top executives leave the company over the last 3 months?
I feel like I’m watching a rerun of 2001 here and Monster’s on its way to $10 per share!
Now, I’ve never been one to go short a stock…it’s just not something I’m comfortable doing.
But you should definitely have a look at your portfolio, because if you have “a Monster” lurking in there, it’d be a smart move to get rid of it and get rid of it quick!”