Brunswick Corp. Chairman and CEO George W. Buckley summarized the company’s strategy and reconfirmed its earnings estimates for 2005 while speaking with analysts and investors at a company-sponsored event in Miami, which is hosting the annual Miami International Boat Show.
In his presentation, Buckley stated that Brunswick will continue to pursue a “customer-led strategy” for growth, emphasizing innovation and technology as well as focusing on operations excellence and financial discipline.
Buckley added that Brunswick will blend organic growth and select acquisitions with efforts to reduce costs and improve efficiencies to grow both sales and earnings to further its position as “the world’s pre-eminent company in all its core business segments.” Brunswick is the world’s largest maker of pleasure boats, marine engines and electronics, commercial fitness equipment, bowling and billiards products.
Since 2000, when he assumed his current responsibilities, Buckley explained, Brunswick has maintained two primary strategic thrusts — get the product right across all lines and get the distribution right across all lines. To support these efforts, Brunswick has executed a number of initiatives that have “delivered rapid growth, and [they] believe irrevocable change” in its industries.
That evolution will continue as Brunswick begins to instill various process improvements aimed at both better integrating product development and applying rigorous systems engineering efforts to build in quality and enhance reliability by eliminating or better engineering interfaces, junctures where products most likely fail. This approach is being applied to the company’s sizable boat and engine operations to bring together boat design, propulsion, electronics, and entertainment to work as one — “everything designed together to work together” — to make boating simpler, more enjoyable, and more affordable.
Buckley pointed to Brunswick’s accomplishments and plans, along with favorable market and demographic data, to reconfirm Brunswick’s previously announced earnings estimates for the year of $3.15 to $3.30 per share for 2005, up from the $2.77 EPS reported for 2004. Buckley stated that the company bases its estimate on the assumption that the marine industry will be up 5 to 6% at retail, which will drive Brunswick’s organic sales growth to be up between 11 to 12% for 2005, with operating margin improvement of between 70 to 100 basis points.
