Jeff Gardner, the new chief executive of vehicle tracking and management company CalAmp Corp., is finding out just how much the coronavirus pandemic has upended traditional ways of doing business.
Gardner, who’s been leading the Irvine-based company since March, hired Senior Vice President Nathan Lowstuter without having met the new recruit in person.
“To date I have never met Nathan,” Gardner said on June 30. “It’s pretty incredible how companies are working differently today to do an important hire like that virtually.”
The appointment of the new head of the global supply chain and operations VP in mid-June was preceded by Zoom calls with the team and the company board.
Gardner, who already knew much of the company’s team while serving on CalAmp’s board the past five years, said there are other key people at the company he hadn’t met in-person as of the end of last month, including new Chief Revenue Officer Arym Diamond, a Silicon Valley veteran who joined the company in March.
Gardner, who comes from Dallas, had been serving as CalAmp (Nasdaq: CAMP) CEO and president on an interim basis, following the retirement of longtime Chief Executive Michael Burdiek.
The company said July 8 that role was changed to full-fledged status in both positions, as the company transitions its focus to more software from its traditional hardware base.
Product Base
CalAmp, which has a market cap of about $270 million, provides software for tracking and managing vehicles, and supplies connected car and truck products in a sector known as telematics.
Its products include the LoJack stolen vehicle recovery system (see story, this page), Tracker and Here Comes the Bus. The company has 20 million products installed and over 1.3 million software and services subscribers worldwide, according to its website.
Just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S., CalAmp in February introduced “iOn Vision,” a video and computer-based system that lets fleet operators keep track of vehicles.
The iOn Vision system helps monitor speed, stop sign violations, tailgating, harsh braking and rapid acceleration. It also lets fleet operators capture video evidence of critical collision events to facilitate investigations and claims processing.
The company reported consolidated revenue of $366.1 million for the fiscal year ended Feb. 29, up from $363.8 million the year prior, and $80.2 million in the latest quarter.
Home Office
You haven’t needed LoJack to track down Gardner since he took over his new role; he’s largely been working from his new home in OC.
“I’ve been working from the condo here, trying to move the business along,” he said. Gardner only heads into the office for important events such as last month’s earnings call. The company typically has about 100 people at its Spectrum-area headquarters during normal times.
Virtual meetings on RingCentral have kept the new boss front and center in leading the company as he spends several hours talking with his colleagues every day. He also hosts virtual happy hours with 15 employees at a time across the organization.
Mixed Results
Last month’s earnings was a mixed bag, due to the pandemic.
CalAmp said June 25 that in the three-month period ended May 31, revenue from its software & subscription services division was $28 million, a 10% increase year-over-year.
Net revenue decreased 10%, though. The drop was not as severe as the company had expected.
“That was all COVID-related,” Gardner said of the decrease. He said the company was “really pleased” with the quarterly result, which came about despite being constrained in terms of getting access to customers to do installations in vehicles.
Shares in the company have lost 20% of their value this year, trading at $7.75 apiece.
The CEO remains optimistic about the future, adding that the company has not laid anyone off due to the COVID-19 recession.
“We have our team thinking very positively about the back half of the year,” according to Gardner.
Changes from prior operating procedures will remain in the near-term. “It’s likely that our customer interactions will be primarily virtual for the entirety of this year,” according to Gardner.
Gardner has been keeping a wary eye on Texas and other states, where the number of coronavirus cases has been spiking. But overall, he said: “We’re definitely seeing things turning back to normalcy.”
“In general, car dealerships across the U.S. are open,” he said. “You can see a ton of business.” He adds that the “same is true in Italy,” the base for the company’s European operations.
Less China
CalAmp, like many other companies, is seeking to reduce its reliance on a global supply chain deeply tied to China.
“We’ve shifted quite a bit from China. China represents somewhere around 25% of our global supply chain,” Gardner said. “At one point for CalAmp it was nearly 75%.”
The recent hire of Lowstuter was made with more of those changes in mind.
The company has diversified globally beyond just China to Taiwan, Mexico and Malaysia, according to the CEO.
“Most of our employees are in the U.S.,” Gardner said.
Car Thefts on Rise, CalAmp Data Shows
One line of work seeing an uptick in business during the pandemic: attempted car thefts.
CalAmp Corp. earlier this month released a report showing that auto theft recoveries in the U.S. jumped 15% in April over year-ago levels, and continued to grow in May, “outpacing last year’s number at this time by 11%.”
In California, car recoveries were up 35% in May, compared to year-ago levels.
Hondas are the most recovered vehicle types, followed by Toyota and Chevrolet.
“It’s clear that auto thieves have been hard at work during the pandemic,” said Justin Schmid, senior vice president, general manager of LoJack Global.
CalAmp’s best-known product line is LoJack, a service which allows for the monitoring and recovery of stolen vehicles, thanks to a hidden receiver transmitter that’s accessible by police. The company said the product “consistently delivers a 90%-plus recovery rate on cars, trucks, and SUVs, and over $1 billion worth of LoJack-equipped vehicles have been recovered in the U.S. alone.”
The report demonstrates that “auto theft is on the rise during the COVID-19 lockdown, [and that] consumers must stay vigilant and protect their vehicles.”
—Kevin Costelloe
