Some executives make no secret about their love of Orange County.
Three top executives at San Diego-based Websense Inc., an Internet security company, prove it daily.
Each morning, John Carrington, Websense’s chief executive, and two of his top lieutenants drive from their OC homes to meet at a grocery store parking lot in San Juan Capistrano.
From there, the three commute to the company’s San Diego headquarters near the University of California, San Diego.
The executives hold their morning meetings in a Lincoln Navigator,something they’ve done for the past six years.
Their story is recounted in a new book, “Corporate Canaries,” by Gary Sutton, who sits on Websense’s board.
Sutton, who specializes in working with troubled companies, writes on what managers should focus on to keep their businesses thriving.
Websense provides Internet security products, including software that detects internal hacking tools and filters e-mails.
The company had a recent market value of about $1.25 billion. Yearly sales are about $140 million.
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Carrington, Websense software: executive recruited others from OC to run company |
Sutton said he doubted early on how long the commute would last but changed his mind when he saw they turned the commute into a morning meeting.
“It’s very unusual,” he said. “It made me nervous at first.”
When Carrington started at Websense in 1999, it wasn’t clear how long the job would last.
Back then, the company had just 26 workers and couldn’t meet payroll.
Carrington, who had run Irvine-based software maker Artios Inc. until it was sold in the late 1990s, tapped his former chief financial officer, Doug Wride, to work at Websense.
He also attracted a couple of other OC veterans, including Kian Saneii of software company IPNet Solutions Inc. of Irvine, to make the commute.
It all worked out.
The company turned the corner into profitability by 2001 and hasn’t looked back since. It has no debt and about $300 million in cash.
Meanwhile, the company’s stock has climbed from its lows by more than fivefold.
Websense now has more than 500 workers.
Why not move to OC?
After all, one of the county’s largest companies,Irvine-based computer maker Gateway Inc.,made the move north in 2004.
The move came after Wayne Inouye, who had led Irvine-based computer seller eMachines Inc., engineered the sale of eMachines to Gateway for $266 million.
By the time the eMachines buy closed in early 2004, Inouye was running Gateway with his own hand-picked executive team.
Later that year, Inouye moved Gateway from the San Diego suburb of Poway to Irvine, bringing OC another For-tune 500 company.
Moving to OC wouldn’t be pra-ctical, Sutton said.
Besides, the meetings in the Lincoln have proven beneficial, he said.
Speaking of Gateway
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co., the top maker of memory chips for computers and other electronics, is set to pay $300 million to settle a price fixing case, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
Among the six victims of the alleged price fixing: Gateway.
The fine will settle accusations that Samsung conspired with industry rivals to fix prices and cheat customers from 1999 to 2002.
Samsung’s settlement caps a three-year investigation into memory chips, a $7.7 billion market in the U.S.
In May, fellow South Korean chipmaker Hynix Semiconductor Inc. pleaded guilty and was hit with a $185 million fine.
A year ago, Germany’s Infineon Technologies AG, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to pay a $160 million fine.
Samsung’s $300 million penalty is the second-largest criminal antitrust fine ever, behind only the $500 million fine by Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. in a 1999 vitamins case, according to the Associated Press.
Aside from Gateway, other victims in the case include Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Apple Computer Inc. and IBM Corp.
Emulex on Tap
Can Emulex Corp. keep the surprises coming?
After beating quarterly estimates last time around, the Costa Mesa maker of storage networking gear is set to release earnings Thursday for the quarter ended Sep. 30.
For the June quarter, the company came in with a net profit of $25.3 million,$26.6 million after one-time charges,versus a $573 million loss in the year-ago period.
Analysts had expected $20 million in net income.
Revenue for the June quarter rose by 25% to $108.2 million. That beat expectations of $106 million.
For the recently ended quarter, analysts are looking for $22.5 million in profits, up 150% from a year ago.
Revenue could come in 50% higher at about $109 million.
Emulex has seen growth in sales of fibre channel adapters, which link computers on data storage networks.
Emulex’s reliance on adapters,once seen as a vulnerability,now is a benefit, according to analysts.
The company is seeing a wave of buying by makers of data storage computers, including EMC Corp., HP and IBM.
An earnings surprise could kick start the company’s shares again.
Emulex’s stock hit a 52-week high in August after results for the June quarter but since has fallen about 20%.
