Shhh...it must be a secret because there's no news release yet on their website.
Polycom CEO Andrew Miller resigns-- after the company discovered irregularities in his expense reports. Maybe he didn't "resign" willingly.
Details were uncovered by the audit committee of Polycom's board of directors.
The Board of Directors then named Kevin Parker as interim CEO. Who is Kevin Parker?
Parker is the Chairman of the Board (since May 16, 2013.) So the Board takes over and names one of its own-- and they will start the search for a new CEO.
Miller had been at the helm of Polycom for four years and has successfully guided the company through the period where Cisco acquired Polycom's main rival, Tandberg.
There is a press release about the demise of Miller but it is not on the Polycom web site-- although Miller's photo has already disappeared and Parker's photo is up there with his new title: Chairman of the Board and Interim CEO.
"Andy Miller's resignation under these circumstances is disappointing and should not be viewed as a reflection of the financial integrity of the company, the strength of our team or our plans for the future," says Parker in that release.
In a co-incidence, before becoming CEO, Parker served as Chairman of the Audit Committee since 2005 and as an independent Director of Polycom’s Board of Directors.
Maybe that's not a coincidence and maybe that's why the Board takes the expense account cheating more seriously than the fact Miller held Cisco at bay when a lesser CEO might have been easily rolled over by the Cisco juggernaut.
It will be interesting to see how much money is involved in these "irregularities." Did Miller get the push for $10,000, $100,000 or $1 million in expense account finagling?
Some in USA would say even $1 of such behavior warrants the dismissal of a CEO of a public company...but usually whatever decision a Board of Directors takes reflects its own opinions and not the shareholders'.
The disclosure about Miller's sudden departure (as well as the company's quarterly financial results) was released in a timely fashion-- just after the stock markets had finished trading on the day.
Howard Lichtman, publisher of Telepresence Options, publicly states his theory, "The news of Andy Miller’s departure and the specter of malfeasance has generated the predicable dumping of shares by the aforementioned prudent investors and as of this writing the stock has tanked over 15% for the week. This has effectively put Polycom’s stock “on-sale” at a 15% discount for a potential buy-back on the remaining $89 million. Shrewd."
Could the Board been clever enough to overtly use their “situation” with the CEO to temporarily drive down stock prices for a company buy-back program? They have the motivation and the cash, but wouldn’t the SEC watchdogs see through this ruse?
The company's latest financial results topped Wall Street's expectations.
During Q2 (ended in June), Polycom earned $5.3 million on $345.2 million in revenue. That's down from $6.28 million a year earlier. Revenue fell 3.7% to $345.2 million. Gross margin narrowed to 58.3% from 59.6%.
Sales fell in all territories and they fell 1% to $79.7 million in EMEA. But all of that was still a better performance than Wall Street expected as it has not been a good year for videoconferencing.
Overall that still gives Miller a fairly good report card in a very competitive field. Maybe, like HP's fallen angel Mark Hurd, Miller will get hired by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.
You may remember HP fired Hurd as CEO --despite excellent financial results-- because he allegedly falsified company expense reports to pay for sex with a former contracted employee.
We don't know yet why Miller (at his payscale of $7.5 million in 2012) felt the need to play around with expense reports...but Ellison cares even less about the peccadilloes of a Board of Directors than about the personal peccadilloes of top-performing executives.
“Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he’ll do even better at Oracle,” Larry Ellison said at the time.
Ellison snapped up Mark Hurd thinking he would do a great job at Oracle. And he did.
