Airboy - What's up at P&G?

[bayonetbrant]

How much of this should any of us care about?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/02/news/companies/procter-and-gamble-proxy-battle/index.html

[airboy]

Almost all traditional consumer package goods companies have been clobbered in the last 20 years by two trends. 
Trend 1 = People who shop "local" "fresh" "organic" "no artificial anything" who shifted to brands that gave them those things.
Trend 2 = People who buy on price and thus purchase store brands.

P&G has also been really clobbered by the shift to much less expensive men's shaving equipment & more men with beards.  They own the biggest razor company.

P&G tried raising their price to maintain profits with declining market share.  It worked, sort of.  Their revenue increased but their sales tanked.  Looked bad for the long run so they cut prices and their profits got hammered.

Since P&G is underperforming, they have an outside individual attempting to gain a board seat and change P&G's strategy.  The specific ins & outs of this vary with each company, but firms which have sharply declined in stock value over time tend to attract activist outside purchasers.

[OJsDad]

Airboy, has Peltz ever successfully run a company. 

[airboy]

Airboy, has Peltz ever successfully run a company.

No idea.  I usually don't read the specifics of corporate control struggles in the WSJ.
But a lot of time the activist shareholders have a specific set of strategies they wish to execute and they hire professional managers to actually implement the strategy.

[airboy]

Although the initial count favored the existing management of P&G, a full count of all of the mail-in ballots gives the challenger a lead.  It now looks like it will go into recounts and litigation.