Cranberry Stressline Archives

Jan. 20 - 31, 2000

Media

Cranberry juice and sex
" Let him sip the champagne on Valentine's Day.
You may be better off swilling cranberry juice. "

1/31/00 Urinary tract infection? Unmentionable? Aim those ads above the belt? Don't offend the delicate sensibilities of Sally! ABC News on their Healthy Women web page calls Valentines Day "National Fornication Day" and adds: "Not to say the lovin’ isn’t splendid at the moment. But the day after sex, women may be walking funny for other reasons — an awful urinary tract feeling, or an itchy, yeasty feeling — and wondering why God didn’t spread more wealth of post-boom-boom infections to men."

The treatment and prevention of the common post-coital infections are listed and of course, cranberry juice is suggested as a way to keep bacteria from adhering to the bladder walls.    Read article here.


Ocean Spray to receive discount
by Lane Lopes

Middleboro Gazette ©,
Reprinted with permission

1/27/00 -- The Gas and Electric Department has established a "load retention rate" designed to encourage businesses to stay in the area and expand their facilities. First beneficiary of the new rate is Ocean Spray Cranberries, which will receive a 10 percent discount on electric bills for its Middleboro processing plant over the next five years.

The new rate will save the company about $130,000 a year, G&E energy specialist Jim Collins told commissioners last week. The agreement was reached following closed door negotiations between G&E commissioners and management and Ocean Spray officials. Continued


Ocean Spray names Hawthorne CEO

1/20/00 Ocean Spray announced that Robert Hawthorne was named as the cooperative's new CEO.

Read press release HERE.

Profile
Updated 1/21/00 12:30 PM

H. Robert Hawthorne became President and CEO of the mattress company Select Comfort on April 28, 1997, succeeding Mark De Naray who was retiring.  At the time he took over the company was ranked by Inc. Magazine as the 6th fastest growing private company in the United States, and the fifth largest mattress company. It was marketing its mattresses through more than 150 company owned stores.  Shortly after joining Select Comfort, the company went public. Hawthorne was listed as number forty-one among the most highly compensated executives of publicly held Minnesota companies (Source: Star Tribune), his earnings were listed as $1,029,719 (Breakdown of compensation package). You can read the company press release publicizing Hawthorne's appointment  HERE.

A law suit was announced in June. (see box on right.) According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Select Comfort Corp (Plymouth, MN) was "accused of misleading investors in 2 lawsuits filed June 11, 1999. Besides the company, Select Comfort Vice Chairman H. Robert Hawthorne, CEO Daniel McAthie, and CFO James Rabbe were named. The lawsuits allege that when Select Comfort announced substantial sales gains for 1st quarter 1999, it already knew that 2nd quarter 1999 sales were falling, but failed to disclose the negative information. Select's May 1999 stock repurchase plan was a means to prop up its share price, the suits charge." (from Abstract, InfoTrac) In the second quarter, after falling sales were announced, Select Comfort stock plummeted 74% (Source: Star Tribune ). In October a consolidated class action suit was filed against Hawthorne and the company. He left in May of 1999.

While Hawthorne was at Select Comfort, the companies stock rose when it went public from around 20 to 30, to be currently traded at around 5. See stock history HERE and Recommendations HERE.

The litigation from his previous job as CEO of Select Comfort "charges that defendants violated the U.S. securities laws by issuing materially false and misleading statements, and by omitting material facts required to be disclosed so as to make the statements issued not materially false and misleading throughout the Class Period. Specifically, the complaint alleges that defendants failed to disclose that the Company's only source of customer financing had significantly tightened its credit standards in January 1999 and that the Company's sales had been, and were continuing to be severely negatively impacted." Read further information about this HERE. Hawthorne left Select Comfort in May of this year.

Prior to his brief tenure at Select Comfort, Hawthorne moved within the upper management ranks of Grand Metropolitan, a British corporation which merged with Guinness in 1997 to become Diageo, for most of his career. He came on board as vice president for marketing at Pillsbury - Canada in 1986. He became president of Alpo Petfoods in 1990. There he oversaw that division's expansion into cat food.  He then took over at Pillsbury, replacing Michael J. Paxton who became head of one of  Grand Met's prized brands, Haagen-Dazs.

Hawthorne left Pillsbury after Pillsbury Brands and Pillsbury Specialty Brands were realigned to form Pillsbury North America, to be headed by Richard H. Lenny who was head of Pillsbury Specialty Brands. Hawthorne was in charge of Pillsbury Brands. The company said that Hawthorne left to "pursue a new and different business role."  (See source here).

Prior to being hired by Pillsbury, Hawthorne spent 14 years working his way up the ranks at General Mills - Canada  to become senior vice president in charge of sales, marketing, quality assurance and research and development.

Hawthorne, who is from Canada, is a graduate of Ryerson Business School in Toronto.

Recently Hawthorne was appointed as a member of the Board of Directors of CNS, a company that manufactures the Breath Right® nasal strip. Read press release HERE. He just joined the board of Maxxam Analytics, a Canadian-based environmental testing company.

He is a member of the Wayzata Country Club where he scores in the middle of the pack in golf tournaments.

 

Northland rated "strong buy"

1/31/00 In a Press release entitled "Bouncing Off The Bottom' Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown's Wilkins Initiates", Deutsche Banc has rated Northland Cranberries a "strong buy." PepsiCo is also rated a "strong buy." Coca-Cola Enterprises is rated "buy" and Coca-Cola Company is rated "market perform."


N.A.S.S. Cranberry Report: National yield up 17%, preliminary price at $26.70

1/27/00 From the report released 1/20/00: "At the request of the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association and funded by the Massachusetts Department of Food & Agriculture, a special survey was conducted in January 2000 to determine the preliminary price per barrel of the 1999 cranberry crop in Massachusetts. This special survey was conducted by USDA's New England Agricultural Statistics Service. The preliminary price per barrel is $26.70. The final price per barrel for 1999 crop cranberries will be published for all states in the Cranberries report released on August 15, 2000.

United States - Five Major States: The nation's cranberry crop totaled 6.4 million barrels in 1999, 17 percent above 1998 production. Wisconsin continues to be the largest producing state, with cranberry production totaling 3.3 million barrels in1999. Wisconsin's acreage increased by 100 acres in 1999. Total U.S. bog acres harvested increased 600 acres. Yield per acre averaged 171.7 barrels, 15 percent above 1998's yield; individual states, however, experienced yields ranging from a 14 percent decrease to a 33 percent increase over last year."

You can read the New England Agricultural Statistics Service reported entitled "1999 U.S. Cranberry Production Up 17 Percent" online by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page. If you want to read a summary, click "text", and if you want to read the entire report and view the graphs and charts, click "PDF."


Media:

Cranberries on their mind

1/24/00 A free product endorsement appeared in an unexpected source a few days ago. Here's a quote from an an article in USA Today about AOL and Time-Warner merging:

This is what you get when you ask an Internet entrepreneur how music artists could best leverage the Net to reach fans and make money. Says Sheldon Laube, CEO of Centerbeam: "Really take in the money by doing product placements in songs. How about Ocean Spray Cranberry Fields Forever instead of Strawberry Fields Forever?"


Papers cover Ocean Spray Story

1/21/00 - 1/22/00 Across the country, newspapers are reporting and interpreting the news of Robert Hawthorne's selection to be the new CEO at Ocean Spray. Here are some of the articles:

Ocean Spray hires new CEO - Cape Cod Times

New President named at Ocean Spray - Patriot Ledger

Ex-Pillsbury Exec hired to rescue Ocean Spray - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Ailing Ocean Spray chooses a new CEO - Boston Globe

Ocean Spray fills CEO positions - Boston Herald

Ocean Spray names CEO as Moody's cuts debt rating - Reuters


Follow the money: lawsuits against corporations

1/21/00 When stock prices drop precipitously, you can bet that lawyers, whether they are employed by banks or investments firms or are working directly for stockholders in a class action, will be considering whether there is merit in a lawsuit. However, just because a lawsuit is filed doesn't mean there is a meritorious case. There are always lawyers who will file a class action complaint knowing full well that corporations may settle to avoid prolonged costly litigation.

The Select Comfort case seems to hinge on the premise that company officials should have anticipated that sales, already falling in the second quarter when gains for the first quarter were announced, would be drastically reduced when the lending firm they used when customers wanted to buy on time tightened their credit requirements. This is by no means a forgone conclusion.  HB

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Moody's Downgrades Ocean Spray stock with outlook negative

1/20/00 Moody's Investors Service announced today the downgrading of Oceans Spray  commerical paper and preferred stock rating. The outlook is negative, and further downgrading is possible.

Read Moody's release HERE.


About Select Comfort

1/20/00  According to a press release issued today, Select Comfort is a nationwide firm with "three production plants and 320 stores across the United States, Select Comfort's development team has doubled in recent years, and will double yet again over the next year, providing the technology infrastructure to support Select Comfort's product innovation, quality and customer service strategies. Select Comfort has set itself a goal of moving from the number five to the number one mattress manufacturer in the United States over the next five years."

Read the Select Comfort IPO filing This is a long document which not only provides in-depth information about Select Comfort, which Robert Hawthorne was in charge of taking public; but illustrates the amount of information publicly available when a company is listed on the stock market.

Yahoo business guide summary

Press releases | Newspaper articles

 

 

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