Exam 16: Alternative Exit and Restructuring Strategies: Divestitures, spin-Offs, carve-Outs, split-Ups, and Split-Offs

In a public solicitation,a firm can announce publicly that it is putting itself,a subsidiary,or a product line up for sale.Either potential buyers contact the seller or the seller actively solicits bids from potential buyers or both.

For financial reporting purposes,a distribution of tracking stock splits the parent firm's equity structure into separate classes of stock without a legal split-up of the firm.

AT&T (1984 - 2005)-A POSTER CHILD FOR RESTRUCTURING GONE AWRY Between 1984 and 2000, AT&T underwent four major restructuring programs. These included the government-mandated breakup in 1984, the 1996 effort to eliminate customer conflicts, the 1998 plan to become a broadband powerhouse, and the most recent restructuring program announced in 2000 to correct past mistakes. It is difficult to identify another major corporation that has undergone as much sustained trauma as AT&T. Ironically, a former AT&T operating unit acquired its former parent in 2005. The 1984 Restructure: Changed the Organization But Not the Culture The genesis of Ma Bell's problems may have begun with the consent decree signed with the Department of Justice in 1984, which resulted in the spin-off of its local telephone operations to its shareholders. AT&T retained its long-distance and telecommunications equipment manufacturing operations. Although the breadth of the firm's product offering changed dramatically, little else seems to have changed. The firm remained highly bureaucratic, risk averse, and inward looking. However, substantial market share in the lucrative long-distance market continued to generate huge cash flow for the company, thereby enabling the company to be slow to react to the changing competitive dynamics of the marketplace. The 1996 Restructure: Lack of a Coherent Strategy Cash accumulated from the long-distance business was spent on a variety of ill-conceived strategies such as the firm's foray into the personal computer business. After years of unsuccessfully attempting to redefine the company's strategy, AT&T once again resorted to a major restructure of the firm. In 1996, AT&T spun-off Lucent Technologies (its telecommunications equipment business) and NCR (a computer services business) to shareholders to facilitate Lucent equipment sales to former AT&T operations and to eliminate the non-core NCR computer business. However, this had little impact on the AT&T share price. The 1998 Restructure: Vision Exceeds Ability to Execute In its third major restructure since 1984, AT&T CEO Michael Armstrong passionately unveiled in June of 1998 a daring strategy to transform AT&T from a struggling long-distance telephone company into a broadband internet access and local phone services company. To accomplish this end, he outlined his intentions to acquire cable companies MediaOne Group and Telecommunications Inc. for $58 billion and $48 billion, respectively. The plan was to use cable-TV networks to deliver the first fully integrated package of broadband internet access and local phone service via the cable-TV network. AT&T Could Not Handle Its Early Success During the next several years, Armstrong seemed to be up to the task, cutting sales, general, and administrative expense's share of revenue from 28 percent to 20 percent, giving AT&T a cost structure comparable to its competitors. He attempted to change the bureaucratic culture to one able to compete effectively in the deregulated environment of the post-1996 Telecommunications Act by issuing stock options to all employees, tying compensation to performance, and reducing layers of managers. He used AT&T's stock, as well as cash, to buy the cable companies before the decline in AT&T's long-distance business pushed the stock into a free fall. He also transformed AT&T Wireless from a collection of local businesses into a national business. Notwithstanding these achievements, AT&T experienced major missteps. Employee turnover became a big problem, especially among senior managers. Armstrong also bought Telecommunications and MediaOne when valuations for cable-television assets were near their peak. He paid about $106 billion in 2000, when they were worth about $80 billion. His failure to cut enough deals with other cable operators (e.g., Time Warner) to sell AT&T's local phone service meant that AT&T could market its services only in regional markets rather than on a national basis. In addition, AT&T moved large corporate customers to its Concert joint venture with British Telecom, alienating many AT&T salespeople, who subsequently quit. As a result, customer service deteriorated rapidly and major customers defected. Finally, Armstrong seriously underestimated the pace of erosion in AT&T's long-distance revenue base. AT&T May Have Become Overwhelmed by the Rate of Change What happened? Perhaps AT&T fell victim to the same problems many other acquisitive companies have. AT&T is a company capable of exceptional vision but incapable of effective execution. Effective execution involves buying or building assets at a reasonable cost. Its substantial overpayment for its cable acquisitions meant that it would be unable to earn the returns required by investors in what they would consider a reasonable period. Moreover, Armstrong's efforts to shift from the firm's historical business by buying into the cable-TV business through acquisition had saddled the firm with $62 billion in debt. AT&T tried to do too much too quickly. New initiatives such as high-speed internet access and local telephone services over cable-television network were too small to pick up the slack. Much time and energy seems to have gone into planning and acquiring what were viewed as key building blocks to the strategy. However, there appears to have been insufficient focus and realism in terms of the time and resources required to make all the pieces of the strategy fit together. Some parts of the overall strategy were at odds with other parts. For example, AT&T undercut its core long-distance wired telephone business by offers of free long-distance wireless to attract new subscribers. Despite aggressive efforts to change the culture, AT&T continued to suffer from a culture that evolved in the years before 1996 during which the industry was heavily regulated. That atmosphere bred a culture based on consensus building, ponderously slow decision-making, and a low tolerance for risk. Consequently, the AT&T culture was unprepared for the fiercely competitive deregulated environment of the late 1990s (Truitt, 2001). Furthermore, AT&T created individual tracking stocks for AT&T Wireless and for Liberty Media. The intention of the tracking stocks was to link the unit's stock to its individual performance, create a currency for the unit to make acquisitions, and to provide a new means of motivating the unit's management by giving them stock in their own operation. Unlike a spin-off, AT&T's board continued to exert direct control over these units. In an IPO in April 2000, AT&T sold 14 percent of AT&T's Wireless tracking stock to the public to raise funds and to focus investor attention on the true value of the Wireless operations. Investors Lose Patience Although all of these actions created a sense that grandiose change was imminent, investor patience was wearing thin. Profitability foundered. The market share loss in its long-distance business accelerated. Although cash flow remained strong, it was clear that a cash machine so dependent on the deteriorating long-distance telephone business soon could grind to a halt. Investors' loss of faith was manifested in the sharp decline in AT&T stock that occurred in 2000. The 2000 Restructure: Correcting the Mistakes of the Past Pushed by investor impatience and a growing realization that achieving AT&T's vision would be more time and resource consuming than originally believed, Armstrong announced on October 25, 2000 the breakup of the business for the fourth time. The plan involved the creation of four new independent companies including AT&T Wireless, AT&T Consumer, AT&T Broadband, and Liberty Media. By breaking the company into specific segments, AT&T believed that individual units could operate more efficiently and aggressively. AT&T's consumer long-distance business would be able to enter the digital subscriber line (DSL) market. DSL is a broadband technology based on the telephone wires that connect individual homes with the telephone network. AT&T's cable operations could continue to sell their own fast internet connections and compete directly against AT&T's long-distance telephone business. Moreover, the four individual businesses would create "pure-play" investor opportunities. Specifically, AT&T proposed splitting off in early 2001 AT&T Wireless and issuing tracking stocks to the public in late 2001 for AT&T's Consumer operations, including long-distance and Worldnet Internet service, and AT&T's Broadband (cable) operations. The tracking shares would later be converted to regular AT&T common shares as if issued by AT&T Broadband, making it an independent entity. AT&T would retain AT&T Business Services (i.e., AT&T Lab and Telecommunications Network) with the surviving AT&T entity. Investor reaction was swift and negative. Not swayed by the proposal, investors caused the stock to drop 13 percent in a single day. Moreover, it ended 2000 at 17 ½, down 66 percent from the beginning of the year. The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same On July 10, 2001, AT&T Wireless Services became an independent company, in accordance with plans announced during the 2000 restructure program. AT&T Wireless became a separate company when AT&T converted the tracking shares of the mobile-phone business into common stock and split-off the unit from the parent. AT&T encouraged shareholders to exchange their AT&T common shares for Wireless common shares by offering AT&T shareholders 1.176 Wireless shares for each share of AT&T common. The exchange ratio represented a 6.5 percent premium over AT&T's current common share price. AT&T Wireless shares have fallen 44 percent since AT&T first sold the tracking stock in April 2000. On August 10, 2001, AT&T spun off Liberty Media. After extended discussions, AT&T agreed on December 21, 2001 to merge its broadband unit with Comcast to create the largest cable television and high-speed internet service company in the United States. Without the future growth engine offered by Broadband and Wireless, AT&T's remaining long-distance businesses and business services operations had limited growth prospects. After a decade of tumultuous change, AT&T was back where it was at the beginning of the 1990s. At about $15 billion in late 2004, AT&T's market capitalization was about one-sixth of that of such major competitors as Verizon and SBC. SBC Communications (a former local AT&T operating company) acquired AT&T on November 18, 2005 in a $16 billion deal and promptly renamed the combined firms AT&T. -What challenges did AT&T face in trying to split-up the company in 2000? What might you have done differently to overcome these obstacles?

AT&T (1984 - 2005)-A POSTER CHILD FOR RESTRUCTURING GONE AWRY Between 1984 and 2000, AT&T underwent four major restructuring programs. These included the government-mandated breakup in 1984, the 1996 effort to eliminate customer conflicts, the 1998 plan to become a broadband powerhouse, and the most recent restructuring program announced in 2000 to correct past mistakes. It is difficult to identify another major corporation that has undergone as much sustained trauma as AT&T. Ironically, a former AT&T operating unit acquired its former parent in 2005. The 1984 Restructure: Changed the Organization But Not the Culture The genesis of Ma Bell's problems may have begun with the consent decree signed with the Department of Justice in 1984, which resulted in the spin-off of its local telephone operations to its shareholders. AT&T retained its long-distance and telecommunications equipment manufacturing operations. Although the breadth of the firm's product offering changed dramatically, little else seems to have changed. The firm remained highly bureaucratic, risk averse, and inward looking. However, substantial market share in the lucrative long-distance market continued to generate huge cash flow for the company, thereby enabling the company to be slow to react to the changing competitive dynamics of the marketplace. The 1996 Restructure: Lack of a Coherent Strategy Cash accumulated from the long-distance business was spent on a variety of ill-conceived strategies such as the firm's foray into the personal computer business. After years of unsuccessfully attempting to redefine the company's strategy, AT&T once again resorted to a major restructure of the firm. In 1996, AT&T spun-off Lucent Technologies (its telecommunications equipment business) and NCR (a computer services business) to shareholders to facilitate Lucent equipment sales to former AT&T operations and to eliminate the non-core NCR computer business. However, this had little impact on the AT&T share price. The 1998 Restructure: Vision Exceeds Ability to Execute In its third major restructure since 1984, AT&T CEO Michael Armstrong passionately unveiled in June of 1998 a daring strategy to transform AT&T from a struggling long-distance telephone company into a broadband internet access and local phone services company. To accomplish this end, he outlined his intentions to acquire cable companies MediaOne Group and Telecommunications Inc. for $58 billion and $48 billion, respectively. The plan was to use cable-TV networks to deliver the first fully integrated package of broadband internet access and local phone service via the cable-TV network. AT&T Could Not Handle Its Early Success During the next several years, Armstrong seemed to be up to the task, cutting sales, general, and administrative expense's share of revenue from 28 percent to 20 percent, giving AT&T a cost structure comparable to its competitors. He attempted to change the bureaucratic culture to one able to compete effectively in the deregulated environment of the post-1996 Telecommunications Act by issuing stock options to all employees, tying compensation to performance, and reducing layers of managers. He used AT&T's stock, as well as cash, to buy the cable companies before the decline in AT&T's long-distance business pushed the stock into a free fall. He also transformed AT&T Wireless from a collection of local businesses into a national business. Notwithstanding these achievements, AT&T experienced major missteps. Employee turnover became a big problem, especially among senior managers. Armstrong also bought Telecommunications and MediaOne when valuations for cable-television assets were near their peak. He paid about $106 billion in 2000, when they were worth about $80 billion. His failure to cut enough deals with other cable operators (e.g., Time Warner) to sell AT&T's local phone service meant that AT&T could market its services only in regional markets rather than on a national basis. In addition, AT&T moved large corporate customers to its Concert joint venture with British Telecom, alienating many AT&T salespeople, who subsequently quit. As a result, customer service deteriorated rapidly and major customers defected. Finally, Armstrong seriously underestimated the pace of erosion in AT&T's long-distance revenue base. AT&T May Have Become Overwhelmed by the Rate of Change What happened? Perhaps AT&T fell victim to the same problems many other acquisitive companies have. AT&T is a company capable of exceptional vision but incapable of effective execution. Effective execution involves buying or building assets at a reasonable cost. Its substantial overpayment for its cable acquisitions meant that it would be unable to earn the returns required by investors in what they would consider a reasonable period. Moreover, Armstrong's efforts to shift from the firm's historical business by buying into the cable-TV business through acquisition had saddled the firm with $62 billion in debt. AT&T tried to do too much too quickly. New initiatives such as high-speed internet access and local telephone services over cable-television network were too small to pick up the slack. Much time and energy seems to have gone into planning and acquiring what were viewed as key building blocks to the strategy. However, there appears to have been insufficient focus and realism in terms of the time and resources required to make all the pieces of the strategy fit together. Some parts of the overall strategy were at odds with other parts. For example, AT&T undercut its core long-distance wired telephone business by offers of free long-distance wireless to attract new subscribers. Despite aggressive efforts to change the culture, AT&T continued to suffer from a culture that evolved in the years before 1996 during which the industry was heavily regulated. That atmosphere bred a culture based on consensus building, ponderously slow decision-making, and a low tolerance for risk. Consequently, the AT&T culture was unprepared for the fiercely competitive deregulated environment of the late 1990s (Truitt, 2001). Furthermore, AT&T created individual tracking stocks for AT&T Wireless and for Liberty Media. The intention of the tracking stocks was to link the unit's stock to its individual performance, create a currency for the unit to make acquisitions, and to provide a new means of motivating the unit's management by giving them stock in their own operation. Unlike a spin-off, AT&T's board continued to exert direct control over these units. In an IPO in April 2000, AT&T sold 14 percent of AT&T's Wireless tracking stock to the public to raise funds and to focus investor attention on the true value of the Wireless operations. Investors Lose Patience Although all of these actions created a sense that grandiose change was imminent, investor patience was wearing thin. Profitability foundered. The market share loss in its long-distance business accelerated. Although cash flow remained strong, it was clear that a cash machine so dependent on the deteriorating long-distance telephone business soon could grind to a halt. Investors' loss of faith was manifested in the sharp decline in AT&T stock that occurred in 2000. The 2000 Restructure: Correcting the Mistakes of the Past Pushed by investor impatience and a growing realization that achieving AT&T's vision would be more time and resource consuming than originally believed, Armstrong announced on October 25, 2000 the breakup of the business for the fourth time. The plan involved the creation of four new independent companies including AT&T Wireless, AT&T Consumer, AT&T Broadband, and Liberty Media. By breaking the company into specific segments, AT&T believed that individual units could operate more efficiently and aggressively. AT&T's consumer long-distance business would be able to enter the digital subscriber line (DSL) market. DSL is a broadband technology based on the telephone wires that connect individual homes with the telephone network. AT&T's cable operations could continue to sell their own fast internet connections and compete directly against AT&T's long-distance telephone business. Moreover, the four individual businesses would create "pure-play" investor opportunities. Specifically, AT&T proposed splitting off in early 2001 AT&T Wireless and issuing tracking stocks to the public in late 2001 for AT&T's Consumer operations, including long-distance and Worldnet Internet service, and AT&T's Broadband (cable) operations. The tracking shares would later be converted to regular AT&T common shares as if issued by AT&T Broadband, making it an independent entity. AT&T would retain AT&T Business Services (i.e., AT&T Lab and Telecommunications Network) with the surviving AT&T entity. Investor reaction was swift and negative. Not swayed by the proposal, investors caused the stock to drop 13 percent in a single day. Moreover, it ended 2000 at 17 ½, down 66 percent from the beginning of the year. The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same On July 10, 2001, AT&T Wireless Services became an independent company, in accordance with plans announced during the 2000 restructure program. AT&T Wireless became a separate company when AT&T converted the tracking shares of the mobile-phone business into common stock and split-off the unit from the parent. AT&T encouraged shareholders to exchange their AT&T common shares for Wireless common shares by offering AT&T shareholders 1.176 Wireless shares for each share of AT&T common. The exchange ratio represented a 6.5 percent premium over AT&T's current common share price. AT&T Wireless shares have fallen 44 percent since AT&T first sold the tracking stock in April 2000. On August 10, 2001, AT&T spun off Liberty Media. After extended discussions, AT&T agreed on December 21, 2001 to merge its broadband unit with Comcast to create the largest cable television and high-speed internet service company in the United States. Without the future growth engine offered by Broadband and Wireless, AT&T's remaining long-distance businesses and business services operations had limited growth prospects. After a decade of tumultuous change, AT&T was back where it was at the beginning of the 1990s. At about $15 billion in late 2004, AT&T's market capitalization was about one-sixth of that of such major competitors as Verizon and SBC. SBC Communications (a former local AT&T operating company) acquired AT&T on November 18, 2005 in a $16 billion deal and promptly renamed the combined firms AT&T. -AT&T overpaid for many of its largest acquisitions made during the 1990s? How might this have contributed to its subsequent restructuring efforts?

Sara Lee Attempts to Create Value through Restructuring After spurning a series of takeover offers, Sara Lee, a global consumer goods company, announced in early 2011 its intention to split the firm into two separate publicly traded companies. The two companies would consist of the firm's North American retail and food service division and its international beverage business. The announcement comes after a long string of restructuring efforts designed to increase shareholder value. It remains to be seen if the latest effort will be any more successful than earlier efforts. Reflecting a flawed business strategy, Sara Lee had struggled for more than a decade to create value for its shareholders by radically restructuring its portfolio of businesses. The firm's business strategy had evolved from one designed in the mid-1980s to market a broad array of consumer products from baked goods to coffee to underwear under the highly recognizable brand name of Sara Lee into one that was designed to refocus the firm on the faster-growing food and beverage and apparel businesses. Despite acquiring several European manufacturers of processed meats in the early 1990s, the company's profits and share price continued to flounder. In September 1997, Sara Lee embarked on a major restructuring effort designed to boost both profits, which had been growing by about 6% during the previous five years, and the company's lagging share price. The restructuring program was intended to reduce the firm's degree of vertical integration, shifting from a manufacturing and sales orientation to one focused on marketing the firm's top brands. The firm increasingly viewed itself as more of a marketing than a manufacturing enterprise. Sara Lee outsourced or sold 110 manufacturing and distribution facilities over the next two years. Nearly 10,000 employees, representing 7% of the workforce, were laid off. The proceeds from the sale of facilities and the cost savings from outsourcing were either reinvested in the firm's core food businesses or used to repurchase $3 billion in company stock. 1n 1999 and 2000, the firm acquired several brands in an effort to bolster its core coffee operations, including such names as Chock Full o'Nuts, Hills Bros, and Chase & Sanborn. Despite these restructuring efforts, the firm's stock price continued to drift lower. In an attempt to reverse the firm's misfortunes, the firm announced an even more ambitious restructuring plan in 2000. Sara Lee would focus on three main areas: food and beverages, underwear, and household products. The restructuring efforts resulted in the shutdown of a number of meat packing plants and a number of small divestitures, resulting in a 10% reduction (about 13,000 people) in the firm's workforce. Sara Lee also completed the largest acquisition in its history, purchasing The Earthgrains Company for $1.9 billion plus the assumption of $0.9 billion in debt. With annual revenue of $2.6 billion, Earthgrains specialized in fresh packaged bread and refrigerated dough. However, despite ongoing restructuring activities, Sara Lee continued to underperform the broader stock market indices. In February 2005, Sara Lee executed its most ambitious plan to transform the firm into a company focused on the global food, beverage, and household and body care businesses. To this end, the firm announced plans to dispose of 40% of its revenues, totaling more than $8 billion, including its apparel, European packaged meats, U.S. retail coffee, and direct sales businesses. In 2006, the firm announced that it had completed the sale of its branded apparel business in Europe, Global Body Care and European Detergents units, and its European meat processing operations. Furthermore, the firm spun off its U.S. Branded Apparel unit into a separate publicly traded firm called HanesBrands Inc. The firm raised more than $3.7 billion in cash from the divestitures. The firm was now focused on its core businesses: food, beverages, and household and body care. In late 2008, Sara Lee announced that it would close its kosher meat processing business and sold its retail coffee business. In 2009, the firm sold its Household and Body Care business to Unilever for $1.6 billion and its hair care business to Procter & Gamble for $0.4 billion. In 2010, the proceeds of the divestitures made the prior year were used to repurchase $1.3 billion of Sara Lee's outstanding shares. The firm also announced its intention to repurchase another $3 billion of its shares during the next three years. If completed, this would amount to about one-third of its approximate $10 billion market capitalization at the end of 2010. What remains of the firm are food brands in North America, including Hillshire Farm, Ball Park, and Jimmy Dean processed meats and Sara Lee baked goods and Earthgrains. A food distribution unit will also remain in North America, as will its beverage and bakery operations. Sara Lee is rapidly moving to become a food, beverage, and bakery firm. As it becomes more focused, it could become a takeover target. Has the 2005 restructuring program worked? To answer this question, it is necessary to determine the percentage change in Sara Lee's share price from the announcement date of the restructuring program to the end of 2010, as well as the percentage change in the share price of HanesBrands Inc., which was spun off on August 18, 2006. Sara Lee shareholders of record received one share of HanesBrands Inc. for every eight Sara Lee shares they held. Sara Lee's share price jumped by 6% on the February 21, 2004 announcement date, closing at $19.56. Six years later, the stock price ended 2010 at $14.90, an approximate 24% decline since the announcement of the restructuring program in early 2005. Immediately following the spinoff, HanesBrands' stock traded at $22.06 per share; at the end of 2010, the stock traded at $25.99, a 17.8% increase. A shareholder owning 100 Sara Lee shares when the spin-off was announced would have been entitled to 12.5 HanesBrands shares. However, they would have actually received 12 shares plus $11.03 for fractional shares . A shareholder of record who had 100 Sara Lee shares on the announcement date of the restructuring program and held their shares until the end of 2010 would have seen their investment decline 24% from $1,956 (100 shares × $19.56 per share) to $1,486.56 by the end of 2010. However, this would have been partially offset by the appreciation of the HanesBrands shares between 2006 and 2010. Therefore, the total value of the hypothetical shareholder's investment would have decreased by 7.5% from $1,956 to $1,809.47 . This compares to a more modest 5% loss for investors who put the same $1,956 into a Standard & Poor's 500 stock index fund during the same period. Why did Sara Lee underperform the broader stock market indices during this period? Despite the cumulative buyback of more than $4 billion of its outstanding stock, Sara Lee's fully diluted earnings per share dropped from $0.90 per share in 2005 to $0.52 per share in 2009. Furthermore, the book value per share, a proxy for the breakup or liquidation value of the firm, dropped from $3.28 in 2005 to $2.93 in 2009, reflecting the ongoing divestiture program. While the HanesBrands spin-off did create value for the shareholder, the amount was far too modest to offset the decline in Sara Lee's market value. During the same period, total revenue grew at a tepid average annual rate of about 3% to about $13 billion in 2009. Case Study : -Explain why Sara Lee may have chosen to spin-off rather than to divest HanesBrands Inc.? Be specific.

A spin-off may create shareholder wealth for all of the following reasons except for

AT&T (1984 - 2005)-A POSTER CHILD FOR RESTRUCTURING GONE AWRY Between 1984 and 2000, AT&T underwent four major restructuring programs. These included the government-mandated breakup in 1984, the 1996 effort to eliminate customer conflicts, the 1998 plan to become a broadband powerhouse, and the most recent restructuring program announced in 2000 to correct past mistakes. It is difficult to identify another major corporation that has undergone as much sustained trauma as AT&T. Ironically, a former AT&T operating unit acquired its former parent in 2005. The 1984 Restructure: Changed the Organization But Not the Culture The genesis of Ma Bell's problems may have begun with the consent decree signed with the Department of Justice in 1984, which resulted in the spin-off of its local telephone operations to its shareholders. AT&T retained its long-distance and telecommunications equipment manufacturing operations. Although the breadth of the firm's product offering changed dramatically, little else seems to have changed. The firm remained highly bureaucratic, risk averse, and inward looking. However, substantial market share in the lucrative long-distance market continued to generate huge cash flow for the company, thereby enabling the company to be slow to react to the changing competitive dynamics of the marketplace. The 1996 Restructure: Lack of a Coherent Strategy Cash accumulated from the long-distance business was spent on a variety of ill-conceived strategies such as the firm's foray into the personal computer business. After years of unsuccessfully attempting to redefine the company's strategy, AT&T once again resorted to a major restructure of the firm. In 1996, AT&T spun-off Lucent Technologies (its telecommunications equipment business) and NCR (a computer services business) to shareholders to facilitate Lucent equipment sales to former AT&T operations and to eliminate the non-core NCR computer business. However, this had little impact on the AT&T share price. The 1998 Restructure: Vision Exceeds Ability to Execute In its third major restructure since 1984, AT&T CEO Michael Armstrong passionately unveiled in June of 1998 a daring strategy to transform AT&T from a struggling long-distance telephone company into a broadband internet access and local phone services company. To accomplish this end, he outlined his intentions to acquire cable companies MediaOne Group and Telecommunications Inc. for $58 billion and $48 billion, respectively. The plan was to use cable-TV networks to deliver the first fully integrated package of broadband internet access and local phone service via the cable-TV network. AT&T Could Not Handle Its Early Success During the next several years, Armstrong seemed to be up to the task, cutting sales, general, and administrative expense's share of revenue from 28 percent to 20 percent, giving AT&T a cost structure comparable to its competitors. He attempted to change the bureaucratic culture to one able to compete effectively in the deregulated environment of the post-1996 Telecommunications Act by issuing stock options to all employees, tying compensation to performance, and reducing layers of managers. He used AT&T's stock, as well as cash, to buy the cable companies before the decline in AT&T's long-distance business pushed the stock into a free fall. He also transformed AT&T Wireless from a collection of local businesses into a national business. Notwithstanding these achievements, AT&T experienced major missteps. Employee turnover became a big problem, especially among senior managers. Armstrong also bought Telecommunications and MediaOne when valuations for cable-television assets were near their peak. He paid about $106 billion in 2000, when they were worth about $80 billion. His failure to cut enough deals with other cable operators (e.g., Time Warner) to sell AT&T's local phone service meant that AT&T could market its services only in regional markets rather than on a national basis. In addition, AT&T moved large corporate customers to its Concert joint venture with British Telecom, alienating many AT&T salespeople, who subsequently quit. As a result, customer service deteriorated rapidly and major customers defected. Finally, Armstrong seriously underestimated the pace of erosion in AT&T's long-distance revenue base. AT&T May Have Become Overwhelmed by the Rate of Change What happened? Perhaps AT&T fell victim to the same problems many other acquisitive companies have. AT&T is a company capable of exceptional vision but incapable of effective execution. Effective execution involves buying or building assets at a reasonable cost. Its substantial overpayment for its cable acquisitions meant that it would be unable to earn the returns required by investors in what they would consider a reasonable period. Moreover, Armstrong's efforts to shift from the firm's historical business by buying into the cable-TV business through acquisition had saddled the firm with $62 billion in debt. AT&T tried to do too much too quickly. New initiatives such as high-speed internet access and local telephone services over cable-television network were too small to pick up the slack. Much time and energy seems to have gone into planning and acquiring what were viewed as key building blocks to the strategy. However, there appears to have been insufficient focus and realism in terms of the time and resources required to make all the pieces of the strategy fit together. Some parts of the overall strategy were at odds with other parts. For example, AT&T undercut its core long-distance wired telephone business by offers of free long-distance wireless to attract new subscribers. Despite aggressive efforts to change the culture, AT&T continued to suffer from a culture that evolved in the years before 1996 during which the industry was heavily regulated. That atmosphere bred a culture based on consensus building, ponderously slow decision-making, and a low tolerance for risk. Consequently, the AT&T culture was unprepared for the fiercely competitive deregulated environment of the late 1990s (Truitt, 2001). Furthermore, AT&T created individual tracking stocks for AT&T Wireless and for Liberty Media. The intention of the tracking stocks was to link the unit's stock to its individual performance, create a currency for the unit to make acquisitions, and to provide a new means of motivating the unit's management by giving them stock in their own operation. Unlike a spin-off, AT&T's board continued to exert direct control over these units. In an IPO in April 2000, AT&T sold 14 percent of AT&T's Wireless tracking stock to the public to raise funds and to focus investor attention on the true value of the Wireless operations. Investors Lose Patience Although all of these actions created a sense that grandiose change was imminent, investor patience was wearing thin. Profitability foundered. The market share loss in its long-distance business accelerated. Although cash flow remained strong, it was clear that a cash machine so dependent on the deteriorating long-distance telephone business soon could grind to a halt. Investors' loss of faith was manifested in the sharp decline in AT&T stock that occurred in 2000. The 2000 Restructure: Correcting the Mistakes of the Past Pushed by investor impatience and a growing realization that achieving AT&T's vision would be more time and resource consuming than originally believed, Armstrong announced on October 25, 2000 the breakup of the business for the fourth time. The plan involved the creation of four new independent companies including AT&T Wireless, AT&T Consumer, AT&T Broadband, and Liberty Media. By breaking the company into specific segments, AT&T believed that individual units could operate more efficiently and aggressively. AT&T's consumer long-distance business would be able to enter the digital subscriber line (DSL) market. DSL is a broadband technology based on the telephone wires that connect individual homes with the telephone network. AT&T's cable operations could continue to sell their own fast internet connections and compete directly against AT&T's long-distance telephone business. Moreover, the four individual businesses would create "pure-play" investor opportunities. Specifically, AT&T proposed splitting off in early 2001 AT&T Wireless and issuing tracking stocks to the public in late 2001 for AT&T's Consumer operations, including long-distance and Worldnet Internet service, and AT&T's Broadband (cable) operations. The tracking shares would later be converted to regular AT&T common shares as if issued by AT&T Broadband, making it an independent entity. AT&T would retain AT&T Business Services (i.e., AT&T Lab and Telecommunications Network) with the surviving AT&T entity. Investor reaction was swift and negative. Not swayed by the proposal, investors caused the stock to drop 13 percent in a single day. Moreover, it ended 2000 at 17 ½, down 66 percent from the beginning of the year. The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same On July 10, 2001, AT&T Wireless Services became an independent company, in accordance with plans announced during the 2000 restructure program. AT&T Wireless became a separate company when AT&T converted the tracking shares of the mobile-phone business into common stock and split-off the unit from the parent. AT&T encouraged shareholders to exchange their AT&T common shares for Wireless common shares by offering AT&T shareholders 1.176 Wireless shares for each share of AT&T common. The exchange ratio represented a 6.5 percent premium over AT&T's current common share price. AT&T Wireless shares have fallen 44 percent since AT&T first sold the tracking stock in April 2000. On August 10, 2001, AT&T spun off Liberty Media. After extended discussions, AT&T agreed on December 21, 2001 to merge its broadband unit with Comcast to create the largest cable television and high-speed internet service company in the United States. Without the future growth engine offered by Broadband and Wireless, AT&T's remaining long-distance businesses and business services operations had limited growth prospects. After a decade of tumultuous change, AT&T was back where it was at the beginning of the 1990s. At about $15 billion in late 2004, AT&T's market capitalization was about one-sixth of that of such major competitors as Verizon and SBC. SBC Communications (a former local AT&T operating company) acquired AT&T on November 18, 2005 in a $16 billion deal and promptly renamed the combined firms AT&T. -To what extent did AT&T's ineffectual restructuring reflect factors beyond their control and to what extent was it poor implementation?

The decision to sell or to retain the business depends on a comparison of the pre-tax value of the business to the parent with the after-tax proceeds from the sale of the business.

Restructuring actions may provide tax benefits that cannot be realized without undertaking a restructuring of the business.

Gillette Announces Divestiture Plans With 1998 sales of $10.1 billion, Gillette is the world leader in the production of razor blades, razors, and shaving cream. Gillette also has a leading position in the production of pens and other writing instruments. Gillette's consolidated operating performance during 1999 depended on its core razor blade and razor, Duracell battery, and oral care businesses. Reflecting disappointment in the performance of certain operating units, Gillette's CEO, Michael Hawley, announced in October 1999 his intention to divest poorly performing businesses unless he could be convinced by early 2000 that they could be turned around. The businesses under consideration at that time comprised about 15% of the company's $10 billion in annual sales. Hawley saw the new focus of the company to be in razor blades, batteries, and oral care. To achieve this new focus, Hawley intended to prune the firm's product portfolio. The most likely targets for divestiture at the time included pens (i.e., PaperMate, Parker, and Waterman), with the prospects for operating performance for these units considered dismal. Other units under consideration for divestiture included Braun and toiletries. With respect to these businesses, Hawley apparently intended to be selective. At Braun, where overall operating profits plunged 43% in the first three quarters of 1999, Hawley has announced that Gillette will keep electric shavers and electric toothbrushes. However, the household and personal care appliance units are likely divestiture candidates. The timing of these sales may be poor. A decision to sell Braun at this time would compete against Black & Decker's recently announced decision to sell its appliance business. Although Gillette would be smaller, the firm believes that its margins will improve and that its earnings growth will be more rapid. Moreover, divesting such problem businesses as pens and appliances would let management focus on the units whose prospects are the brightest. These are businesses that Gillette's previous management was simply not willing to sell because of their perceived high potential. : -Comment on the timing of the sale.

Baxter to Spin Off Heart Care Unit Baxter International Inc. announced in late 1999 its intention to spin off its underperforming cardiovascular business, creating a new company that will specialize in treatments for heart disease. The new company will have 6000 employees worldwide and annual revenue in excess of $1 billion. The unit sells biological heart valves harvested from pigs and cows, catheters and other products used to monitor hearts during surgery, and heart-assist devices for patients awaiting surgery. Baxter conceded that they have been ''optimizing'' the cardiovascular business by not making the necessary investments to grow the business. In contrast, the unit's primary competitors, Guidant, Medtronic, and Boston Scientific, are spending more on research and investing more on start-up companies that are developing new technologies than is Baxter. With the spin-off, the new company will have the financial resources that formerly had been siphoned off by the parent, to create an environment that will more directly encourage the speed and innovation necessary to compete effectively in this industry. The unit's stock will be used to provide additional incentive for key employees and to serve as a means of making future acquisitions of companies necessary to extend the unit's product offering. -In your judgment,what did Baxter's management mean when they admitted that they had not been "optimizing" the cardiovascular business in recent years? Explain both the strategic and financial implications of this strategy.

The divesting firm is required to recognize a gain or loss for financial reporting purposes equal to the difference between the fair value of the consideration received for the divested operation and its market value.

Equity carve-outs have some of the characteristics of both divestitures and spin-offs.

A parent firm's decision to sell or to retain a subsidiary is often made by comparing the after-tax equity value of the subsidiary with the pre-tax and interest sale value of the business.

Which of the following is not a characteristic of a spin-off?

An equity carve-out differs from a spin-off for all but which one of the following reasons?

Which of the following is not true of a split-off?

A business that is rich in high-growth opportunities may be an excellent candidate for divestiture to a strategic buyer with significant cash resources and limited growth opportunities.

Antitrust regulatory agencies may make their approval of a merger contingent on the willingness of the merger partners to divest certain businesses.

AT&T (1984 - 2005)-A POSTER CHILD FOR RESTRUCTURING GONE AWRY Between 1984 and 2000, AT&T underwent four major restructuring programs. These included the government-mandated breakup in 1984, the 1996 effort to eliminate customer conflicts, the 1998 plan to become a broadband powerhouse, and the most recent restructuring program announced in 2000 to correct past mistakes. It is difficult to identify another major corporation that has undergone as much sustained trauma as AT&T. Ironically, a former AT&T operating unit acquired its former parent in 2005. The 1984 Restructure: Changed the Organization But Not the Culture The genesis of Ma Bell's problems may have begun with the consent decree signed with the Department of Justice in 1984, which resulted in the spin-off of its local telephone operations to its shareholders. AT&T retained its long-distance and telecommunications equipment manufacturing operations. Although the breadth of the firm's product offering changed dramatically, little else seems to have changed. The firm remained highly bureaucratic, risk averse, and inward looking. However, substantial market share in the lucrative long-distance market continued to generate huge cash flow for the company, thereby enabling the company to be slow to react to the changing competitive dynamics of the marketplace. The 1996 Restructure: Lack of a Coherent Strategy Cash accumulated from the long-distance business was spent on a variety of ill-conceived strategies such as the firm's foray into the personal computer business. After years of unsuccessfully attempting to redefine the company's strategy, AT&T once again resorted to a major restructure of the firm. In 1996, AT&T spun-off Lucent Technologies (its telecommunications equipment business) and NCR (a computer services business) to shareholders to facilitate Lucent equipment sales to former AT&T operations and to eliminate the non-core NCR computer business. However, this had little impact on the AT&T share price. The 1998 Restructure: Vision Exceeds Ability to Execute In its third major restructure since 1984, AT&T CEO Michael Armstrong passionately unveiled in June of 1998 a daring strategy to transform AT&T from a struggling long-distance telephone company into a broadband internet access and local phone services company. To accomplish this end, he outlined his intentions to acquire cable companies MediaOne Group and Telecommunications Inc. for $58 billion and $48 billion, respectively. The plan was to use cable-TV networks to deliver the first fully integrated package of broadband internet access and local phone service via the cable-TV network. AT&T Could Not Handle Its Early Success During the next several years, Armstrong seemed to be up to the task, cutting sales, general, and administrative expense's share of revenue from 28 percent to 20 percent, giving AT&T a cost structure comparable to its competitors. He attempted to change the bureaucratic culture to one able to compete effectively in the deregulated environment of the post-1996 Telecommunications Act by issuing stock options to all employees, tying compensation to performance, and reducing layers of managers. He used AT&T's stock, as well as cash, to buy the cable companies before the decline in AT&T's long-distance business pushed the stock into a free fall. He also transformed AT&T Wireless from a collection of local businesses into a national business. Notwithstanding these achievements, AT&T experienced major missteps. Employee turnover became a big problem, especially among senior managers. Armstrong also bought Telecommunications and MediaOne when valuations for cable-television assets were near their peak. He paid about $106 billion in 2000, when they were worth about $80 billion. His failure to cut enough deals with other cable operators (e.g., Time Warner) to sell AT&T's local phone service meant that AT&T could market its services only in regional markets rather than on a national basis. In addition, AT&T moved large corporate customers to its Concert joint venture with British Telecom, alienating many AT&T salespeople, who subsequently quit. As a result, customer service deteriorated rapidly and major customers defected. Finally, Armstrong seriously underestimated the pace of erosion in AT&T's long-distance revenue base. AT&T May Have Become Overwhelmed by the Rate of Change What happened? Perhaps AT&T fell victim to the same problems many other acquisitive companies have. AT&T is a company capable of exceptional vision but incapable of effective execution. Effective execution involves buying or building assets at a reasonable cost. Its substantial overpayment for its cable acquisitions meant that it would be unable to earn the returns required by investors in what they would consider a reasonable period. Moreover, Armstrong's efforts to shift from the firm's historical business by buying into the cable-TV business through acquisition had saddled the firm with $62 billion in debt. AT&T tried to do too much too quickly. New initiatives such as high-speed internet access and local telephone services over cable-television network were too small to pick up the slack. Much time and energy seems to have gone into planning and acquiring what were viewed as key building blocks to the strategy. However, there appears to have been insufficient focus and realism in terms of the time and resources required to make all the pieces of the strategy fit together. Some parts of the overall strategy were at odds with other parts. For example, AT&T undercut its core long-distance wired telephone business by offers of free long-distance wireless to attract new subscribers. Despite aggressive efforts to change the culture, AT&T continued to suffer from a culture that evolved in the years before 1996 during which the industry was heavily regulated. That atmosphere bred a culture based on consensus building, ponderously slow decision-making, and a low tolerance for risk. Consequently, the AT&T culture was unprepared for the fiercely competitive deregulated environment of the late 1990s (Truitt, 2001). Furthermore, AT&T created individual tracking stocks for AT&T Wireless and for Liberty Media. The intention of the tracking stocks was to link the unit's stock to its individual performance, create a currency for the unit to make acquisitions, and to provide a new means of motivating the unit's management by giving them stock in their own operation. Unlike a spin-off, AT&T's board continued to exert direct control over these units. In an IPO in April 2000, AT&T sold 14 percent of AT&T's Wireless tracking stock to the public to raise funds and to focus investor attention on the true value of the Wireless operations. Investors Lose Patience Although all of these actions created a sense that grandiose change was imminent, investor patience was wearing thin. Profitability foundered. The market share loss in its long-distance business accelerated. Although cash flow remained strong, it was clear that a cash machine so dependent on the deteriorating long-distance telephone business soon could grind to a halt. Investors' loss of faith was manifested in the sharp decline in AT&T stock that occurred in 2000. The 2000 Restructure: Correcting the Mistakes of the Past Pushed by investor impatience and a growing realization that achieving AT&T's vision would be more time and resource consuming than originally believed, Armstrong announced on October 25, 2000 the breakup of the business for the fourth time. The plan involved the creation of four new independent companies including AT&T Wireless, AT&T Consumer, AT&T Broadband, and Liberty Media. By breaking the company into specific segments, AT&T believed that individual units could operate more efficiently and aggressively. AT&T's consumer long-distance business would be able to enter the digital subscriber line (DSL) market. DSL is a broadband technology based on the telephone wires that connect individual homes with the telephone network. AT&T's cable operations could continue to sell their own fast internet connections and compete directly against AT&T's long-distance telephone business. Moreover, the four individual businesses would create "pure-play" investor opportunities. Specifically, AT&T proposed splitting off in early 2001 AT&T Wireless and issuing tracking stocks to the public in late 2001 for AT&T's Consumer operations, including long-distance and Worldnet Internet service, and AT&T's Broadband (cable) operations. The tracking shares would later be converted to regular AT&T common shares as if issued by AT&T Broadband, making it an independent entity. AT&T would retain AT&T Business Services (i.e., AT&T Lab and Telecommunications Network) with the surviving AT&T entity. Investor reaction was swift and negative. Not swayed by the proposal, investors caused the stock to drop 13 percent in a single day. Moreover, it ended 2000 at 17 ½, down 66 percent from the beginning of the year. The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same On July 10, 2001, AT&T Wireless Services became an independent company, in accordance with plans announced during the 2000 restructure program. AT&T Wireless became a separate company when AT&T converted the tracking shares of the mobile-phone business into common stock and split-off the unit from the parent. AT&T encouraged shareholders to exchange their AT&T common shares for Wireless common shares by offering AT&T shareholders 1.176 Wireless shares for each share of AT&T common. The exchange ratio represented a 6.5 percent premium over AT&T's current common share price. AT&T Wireless shares have fallen 44 percent since AT&T first sold the tracking stock in April 2000. On August 10, 2001, AT&T spun off Liberty Media. After extended discussions, AT&T agreed on December 21, 2001 to merge its broadband unit with Comcast to create the largest cable television and high-speed internet service company in the United States. Without the future growth engine offered by Broadband and Wireless, AT&T's remaining long-distance businesses and business services operations had limited growth prospects. After a decade of tumultuous change, AT&T was back where it was at the beginning of the 1990s. At about $15 billion in late 2004, AT&T's market capitalization was about one-sixth of that of such major competitors as Verizon and SBC. SBC Communications (a former local AT&T operating company) acquired AT&T on November 18, 2005 in a $16 billion deal and promptly renamed the combined firms AT&T. -What were the primary factors contributing to AT&T's numerous restructuring efforts since 1984? How did they differ? How were they similar?