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http://www.kentucky.com/103/story/516873.html
Official printer of golf’s Ryder Cup
The
scorecards may still be done by hand, but when the world’s best golfers
descend on Louisville for the 2008 Ryder Cup, all the paperwork will be
coming from Lexmark printers.The Lexington-based printer maker is the
“exclusive provider of output technology” for the event at the Valhalla
Golf Club from Sept. 16 to 21.Lexmark will provide laser and
multi-function printers, as well as network management and on-site
personnel.OfficeMax selling more
Lexmark inkjet printer
chief Paul Rooke spoke last week to investors at a Citigroup technology
conference about the company’s distribution.Rooke said the company has
made some progress in getting more of its inkjet products into office
superstores, particularly OfficeMax.”You’ll see a number of inkjets,
particularly our Professional Series … We’re quite pleased with the
results we’ve seen there so far,” he said.He called the company’s
presence “mixed at the moment” in consumer electronics stores.Lexmark
has a strong presence at Circuit City, with whom it has partnered in a
recent advertising campaign. However, it was taken off U.S. Best Buy
shelves earlier this year, and Best Buy sells the products only online.Overseas losing ground
Lexmark
lost ground in the first half of the year in markets in Europe, the
Middle East and Africa, according to market research firm Gartner,
Inc.Trade publication Channel Web reports that Samsung replaced Lexmark
as fifth in market share in the regions.HP remained the dominant leader
with a market share of 44.6 percent, followed by Canon, 16.4 percent;
Epson, 12.9 percent; Brother, 6.3 percent; and Samsung, 6 percent.New Middle East leader
Lexmark
recently installed a new sales chief for its Middle East business. Mark
Thompson previously worked in South Africa and will succeed Mohammed
Addarrat, according to a report on ArabianBusiness.com.Thompson will
focus on what’s called the channel, or the companies that purchase
printers from Lexmark and then resell them.Addarrat told
ArabianBusiness.com that Thompson brings “a fresh set of eyes to the
management.””A large number” of that management, he said, has been
relocated recently.Stock buybacks sped up
Lexmark disclosed
to its investors last week that it has sped up its buyback of stock.In
a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company
said it hired Citibank to buy up more than 3.4 million shares of stock
by last Friday.That’s 85 percent of the shares that the deal calls to
be repurchased by Citibank on behalf of Lexmark.Lexmark is paying the
company $150 million from its available cash.The company said it’s a
more effective and economical way to do a share repurchase.Lexmark has
been aggressively buying back stock over the past few years. Between
2004 and and the middle of 2007, it spent about $2.4 billion buying
back shares. The share count dropped from 133.1 million at that time to
95.5 million.The company had stopped, though, as most of its available
cash was overseas and would have to be repatriated, triggering
taxes.But it began again this year after it issued $650 million in debt
for reasons including to fund share repurchases.The company touts the
buybacks as a way of returning value to shareholders by lowering the
number of outstanding shares, though some analysts have questioned why
the company doesn’t establish a dividend instead.New large shareholder
An
SEC filing last week disclosed that investment group D.E. Shaw &
Co. owns more than 5 percent of Lexmark’s stock.The SEC requires such
large investors to disclose their holdings.The company owns more than
4.6 million shares in the company, which amounted to 5.3 percent as of
Sept. 1.
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