Paul Curlander Quotes (7 Quotes)

Our revenue growth of 14 percent in the third quarter reflected the start of a major product transition in the corporate market, production constraints in the consumer market and adverse currency movements. Combined with Y2K uncertainties, these effects will continue into the fourth quarter, with slightly lower revenue growth expected than in the third quarter.

What we have seen is less than expected end-user demand. We don't know what is causing it. If I were to guess, I would put weak sales of (Lexmark-branded printers) on top.

Although our fourth quarter EPS results were better than expected, they were significantly below a year ago, reflecting a continuation of very challenging business conditions. While we are taking steps to improve our cost and expense structure, at the same time we are committed to maintaining our strategic investments in new product development and branding to strengthen our positioning in growth market segments in which we are currently underrepresented.

The answer for this is we need to get our hardware sales moving in terms of units, particularly branded units.

On the inkjet side, we have seen a slowdown and we need to understand what that is. So the first thing we've got to do to get that moving is start to move the branded unit sales, which is another reason why we're adjusting the price position on the products and driving more aggressively on the promotions.

OEM has been a strong area of growth for us. We are now seeing slowing in the OEM arena.

We really think the usage pattern over product life was different from what we assumed previously. Whether we always had that wrong or there's been a change is hard to say.