Surely things can only get better
With less than three weeks to go to Christmas, the staff at Ilion must be looking forward to the New Year in the vain hope that life at the distributor is going to get better.
It has always been widely believed that with Azlan's little problems, Ilion was in the ideal position to capitalise on its downturn. But it doesn't seem to have made much headway in dominating the networking distribution market. In fact, Computer 2000 and Landis have managed to eat away at its market share.
A third consecutive profit warning is bad news for any company. But it does seem incredible that despite all the horror stories going around about Azlan, Ilion has been unable to shrug off its poor performance.
But why did Ilion issue a profit warning when its share price had jumped a massive 58 per cent to a high of 72.5p? Most companies want their share price to increase. The cynical view is that Ilion wanted to stop its share price rising - after all, how do you explain to your shareholders that while there was a lot of speculation about whether someone was going to buy you, really you were experiencing bad sales?
It would seem that Ilion has a history of blaming everyone for its problems except itself. In November 1997, the company blamed its drop in margins on Azlan, as it was unable to shift excess kit. Then in May this year, Ilion blamed market conditions, claiming that it was 'unpredictable'. This week's crisis has been blamed on redundancies in the City and a slowdown in investment.
It would appear that Roger Paul, now UK managing director at Landis, left Ilion in a very good state, but the company just hasn't managed to to build on what he left behind. Effectively, you could say that Ilion has failed to move its business on by a whole year.
Still, now is the time for change. With a lot of the old guard leaving Ilion and Rob Johnson starting as managing director in the New Year, it will be an interesting time for both the company and its employees as the distributor struggles to regain its market position.