Content area
Full Text
It's shaping up as a critical year for Irvine-based New Media Corp., the PC card company that was launched from a Lake Forest pizzeria just four years ago.
The company, which makes credit-card sized circuit boards that function as interchangeable modems, network connectors or extra memory and storage for portable computers, is enjoying another year of robust sales growth. It expects to finish 1995 with $60 million in sales, up about 30%
But while New Media has continued to grow along with the $1 billion PC card market, the company is in a state of transition.
Already the roles of the company's three co-founders, Carl Perkins, Rod Corder and Eric McAfee, have changed dramatically. While the trio still owns 65% of New Media's privately held stock, only Corder retains a hand in management.
The future of their company increasingly is being determined by a strong corporate partner. AMP Inc., the Pennsylvania electronics giant with about $5 billion in annual revenue, holds about 25% of New Media -- and has the right to appoint a majority of its directors.
New Media is trying to emerge from a year of marketing missteps and inner turmoil that resulted in the management ouster of founders Perkins and McAfee earlier this year -- at AMP's insistence. On AMP's recommendation, Henry Montgomery, a technology industry veteran from the Bay area, has taken over as interim president and CEO.
Montgomery says that although New Media was unprofitable in prior fiscal years, it has been profitable since April -- not bad, he suggests, given the company's short history.
As the company regroups under Montgomery. it is contemplating two possible paths for its future.
On the one hand. Montgomery and other New Media officials say they are working to shore up the company's management and resume its momentum in a possible bid to go public next year.
"In the electronics industry, unless you have access to the public markets, you risk being an also-ran." Montgomery says. "One of my goals is to help the company become more professionally managed and put in some of the more sophisticated controls that you would associate with a company this size."
But industry sources say New Media s other option is to sell the business, and one...