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Joe Orlando named CEO of Collectors Universe
dbtunr
Posts: 614 ✭✭✭
interesting that a card guy got named CEO in that coins make up the vast majority of revenue and profits.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/collectors-universe-names-joseph-j-200500077.html
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COOL! CONGRATS!
Yup. I’d guess theee is some damage control being done right now with the President of the coin sector of CU. lol
Regardless, congratulations to Joe Orlando.
Will be interesting to see who replaces him and how involved he will be with grading and customer issues. Joe did a great job with that
TheClockworkAngelCollection
I agree but that doesn't mean he can be a CEO. He has to deal with a Board of Directors, shareholders, analysts, and kooks like me. The company has been left in a terrible spot. He enters the company at a critical time. The ousted CEO came in a few years back and burned through $13M in cash leaving them to the point where they need to cut or eliminate the dividend. They are down to $9M in cash now and have burned cash every quarter for the last couple of years. The only thing holding up the stock is that dividend. The ousted CEO opened up, for the first time in their 30 year history, a $10M credit line followed by a $3.5M credit line just last month to pay for the new headquarters building. The ousted CEO spent $2M on collectors.com which barely generates any revenue. The ousted CEO and current CFO paid themselves $5M in stock awards for meeting goals when the entire company only made $10M. 2 guys took half the profits. 2 guys who never even touched a single card, autograph, or coin.
I wish him the best. It will be interesting to see what he does with the dividend. If it was me, I would cut it from the current $1.40 to $1. At $1 the cash burn will cease so at least the bleeding will have stopped.
Congratulations on your promotion Joe. Best of luck.
Doug
Liquidating my collection for the 3rd and final time. Time for others to enjoy what I have enjoyed over the last several decades. Money could be put to better use.
Joe, congrats on the promotion. Wishing you the best in your new position.
Donato
Donato's Complete US Type Set ---- Donato's Dansco 7070 Modified Type Set ---- Donato's Basic U.S. Coin Design Set
Successful transactions: Shrub68 (Jim), MWallace (Mike)
Joe has led the card division to a position as industry leader and business is strong. He has been nothing but a positive for the company. Although I wish there was more transparency in their grading process, I appreciate his positive and frequent communication. Congrats to Joe.
Appreciate today-
Bill
My experience from a personal perspective has to do with his generosity when we have had an auction here.
Classy guy.
Congratulations.
Congratulations Joe
I collect: 80’s Rookies and 86 Fleer Basketball
I personally think Joe can be given a great deal of credit for the growth of the PSA brand. His open door policy of responding to collectors has certainly increased their customer loyalty. Having someone who has worked so closely with the customer base will serve Collectors Universe well. Too many companies higher people for leadership roles that are suites that look good on paper but have no real connection to the people who drive their revenue. Hopefully there is a smooth transition to whomever takes over Joe's day to day operations and they continue to be accessible to collectors. I personally want to thank Joe for his efforts at PSA and hopefully in his new role he will still rub elbows with the collectors that support the PSA brand.
Congratulations and good luck!
Where is all this great growth in the card division you all keep talking about?
Qtr end units
Mar 2015 424K
Sep 2015 441K
Dec 2015 390K
Mar 2016 437K
Jun 2016 459K
Sep 2016 437K
Dec 2016 417K
Mar 2017 445K
Jun 2017 455K
It looks like cards have flatlined. All the growth at Collectors Universe has been in the coin division, specifically their overseas China division.
From the article:
A. Clinton Allen, Chairman of the Board, stated, “The Board of Directors welcomes Joe Orlando, as CEO. We know Joe very well as he has been the President of our PSA and PSA/DNA business for 15 years. Joe has led the growth of that business, which has experienced revenue and bottom line increases of 58% and 162%, respectively over the last five years.
I started submitting collectibles to PSA in 2010 and they have definitely grown nicely during that time frame. One of the things you must understand about cards is that there are only so many worth grading and many had predicted years ago that their numbers would plummet. This is not a business where you see staggering sequential growth in general due to the above issue so modest growth is actually fantastic performance. Take the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. which is probably the most submitted card of all time to PSA. They have reviewed 66,627 copies to date. A huge percentage of those were done in the late 90's so you have to be constantly finding new sources of revenue to replace each other. Just recently Joe made mention that PSA has graded over 350k Pokemon cards. People on this board complained about seeing the cards in the SMR but in reality in order to grow the business new genres of interest must surface and clearly PSA has done an excellent job in assisting with the growth.
dbtunr you seem way too smart to think that the actual number graded is what only drives revenue. The average cost paid by submitters per unit is equally if not more important and the number paid per card has clearly risen. Just read the boards and you see collectors begging for a lower priced special on cards from 1956 forward.
No Wall St analyst covers CLCT despite it being a $200M market cap company. Growing revenue by raising fees and having unit volume stagnate reminds me of the cigarette companies. Companies need to grow revenue and unit volume. When they do, analysts will flock to that company.
In a perfect world that is true. This in reality is a very niche business and growth objectives must be met with realistic assumptions. The trading card business as a whole has declined dramatically and if you looked at that backdrop 15 years ago one could have argued that PSA wouldn't exist today. Instead it is stronger than ever so facing those challenges and emerging on the other side as the 800 pound gorilla of the collectibles authentication market is very impressive.
the avg card ticket price was $8.89 in June 2015 and was $9.93 in March 2017 (a high). 11% over 2 years while volume was up a little as well. Nice but not great.
Hey, I like Orlando. He has done a good job. But the company is mostly a coin company. That's just where their bread is buttered. Coin volumes are growing 2X at the rate of cards.
ETOE Total Operating Expense 56.93 48.58 49.58 48.10 39.60 39.20 36.14 31.41 33.83
SOPI Operating Income 13.22 12.37 12.11 12.48 9.49 9.16 8.29 8.36
I have read your commentary for years here and on Yahoo and so you can probably break these numbers down pretty well but a quick glimpse looks like a nicely growing business to me.
Looking at a historical chart I see CLCT was just over $2 a share at the end of 2008. They have paid out $10.475 a share in dividends since then. I would say shareholders should be pretty pleased with the stock trading at $24.51.
Wouldn't it be nice if just for a few moments we can just congratulate the guy and leave the dissection for later?
Joe is a class act and I wish him the best. I greatly appreciate the time he took to answer (and quickly at that) my e-mails to him. I also had a pleasant phone call with him one time as well.
Matt
I know, right? We are a bunch of back seat CEO's that know better than the board what's best for CU, don't you know?
No one really knows anything about what the numbers mean and what's going on behind the scenes. So much of it can be political and/or motivated by things we will never know about. I can only speak to my experiences and what I observed, which was that Joe was always involved and seemed to be well regarded across the board. I always marveled at His willingness to help and be responsive to things a lot of Presidents wouldn't have bothered with. For that, he deserves kudos and it tells me he gets it to a degree. Congratulations to Joe! It seems well deserved
TheClockworkAngelCollection
Joe is a terrific guy, and I am happy for him. Congratulations, Joe!
Okay, Harris. Let's not start a holy war here.
I am very Happy for Joe. In all of my dealings with him he has always responded as if I was I big wig submitter. I only hope that anyone who takes place gives as much consideration to all of us.
Joe Orlando
@JoeOrlandoPSA
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Replying to @glynparson @dpeck100
Thank you Glyn...I'm not going anywhere. I will be around and involved in PSA as long as I'm here.
7:31 PM - 10 Oct 2017
Hopefully pretty soon Joe will come on here and post and give us an update on the happenings.
Congrats to Joe. Well deserved promotion. Good to hear he will remain involved at PSA, too.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
Congrats to Joe. With a brand like PSA that all of us here trust, I do think its
important to have a trustworthy person in charge, whether its the PSA side
or the whole company.
That would actually be illegal as it would violate public company disclosure rules. Everything has changed for him. He can't be responding to private PM's and emails any more.
Oh please stop it.
I guess he already got himself in trouble then for responding to my congratulations tweet.
This is the first I have ever heard that a CEO can't inform their customer base about organizational changes and how they will affect the day to day operations of the company.
Obviously he can't share specific financials but it seems a stretch to me that a response is illegal.
That would actually be illegal as it would violate public company disclosure rules. Everything has changed for him. He can't be responding to private PM's and emails any more.
What??
read up on Regulation FD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_Fair_Disclosure
He can't release new information deemed material to an investor, but to say that he can't respond to private PMs and emails at all is ludicrous. There is nothing of the sort mentioned in Regulation FD.
+1. this thread is becoming a head scratcher. Simply Congrats to Joe...job well done and new job well earned.
Congrats to Joe on the promotion. Also, I agree with Mike that it is in poor taste to be taking shots at him in this post. BTW yes he is allowed to respond to PM's as that is not a violation - sheesh
Posting a factual record of his results is taking shots? Ok snowflake. I wish him the best. Looking forward to his first conference call at the end of the month.
FYI - he is starting at a salary of $350K with up to 75% bonus based on metrics of results. Those seem reasonable compared to the last guy who took home millions in stock awards.
dbtunr: Namecalling on this forum is not permitted. If you cannot be civil, then you are not going to be allowed to post any further.
On another note: It's fine that you guys want to congratulate Joe, but this thread is becoming a debate on what CEO's can or cannot do, etc. Remember that this is a forum about cards and memorabilia. Let's stay on topic. And if you have nothing nice to say, you're welcome to go elsewhere to express yourself.
Forum AdministratorPSA & PSA/DNA ForumModerator@collectors.com | p 800.325.1121 | PSAcard.com
Just came across this interview.
http://gogts.net/hobby-musings-joe-orlando-ready-new-role-collectors-universe/
Interesting in that he only used the word "coin" once and "card" 19 times.
When I first came to the message board I said cards are cards. In reality collectibles are collectibles. The markets are very similar. Joe probably referenced cards consistently in the interview simply because that is what he has dealt with for quite some time. You are just an investor and while there is nothing wrong with that, you over the years have made posts that show you have no real knowledge of the card market and therefore really shouldn't question his leadership. At the current time Collectors Universe is in a very enviable position and promoting someone from within who has really helped their growth as a company is very smart. For years I used to post market share stats as PSA continued to bury their competition on various boards. Time and time again someone would come forward and disagree. Well they were proven wrong time and time again and it is a testament to the vision of Joe Orlando and how PSA expanded in so many directions. Not only did they embrace all genres of cards and collectibles that could be submitted, they expanded so many features on their website to keep collectors engaged and competitive. I checked my email tonight and saw the PSA Insider and read Joe's column from the SMR. There are many of us that have had great interactions with him and he has gone above and beyond for his customer base to help grow the hobby. Since you are an investor you should enjoy hearing posts from customers who not only have spent money directly with the company but have also spent a money on cards that are graded by them in the secondary market. I like to see people succeed so once again best of luck Joe in your new role.
Congrats Joe, you have done a fine job, thank you.
Successful card BST transactions with cbcnow, brogurt, gstarling, Bravesfan 007, and rajah 424.
Congratulations Joe.
Thanks,
David (LD_Ferg)
1985 Topps Football (starting in psa 8) - #9 - started 05/21/06
Yo Joe!
And knowing is half the battle.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/collectors-universe-posts-1q-profit-210949292.html
Explosive results for CLCT!
http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui
Major breakout in the stock and looks poised to challenge the all time high.
Way to go Joe.
Bob C
I wish i invested like 7 years ago!
I’ve never really understood the appeal of collecting coins over cards. Cards offer a personal connection to certain players or certain sets. They are also human beings that performed and may have done other things admirable that creates another connection. Coins don’t seem to offer that so much, unless a coin guy can tell me I’m off on that.
It would be cool if Joe can start to narrow the gap between coins and cards just based on being a card guy first and foremost. Not that I wish the coin market drops, but that the card market starts to climb a lot more...
TheClockworkAngelCollection
I like coins and cards. Coins are a part of our Nations history. I love that you can purchase a
Morgan Dollar that is 135 years old but looks brand new at an affordable price(depending on year)
because the mint had so many of them tucked away in storage vaults.
And the proof like and deep mirror proof like Morgans' are just absolutely beautiful coins.
I love coins as well as cards, also. The history aspect is very appealing to me, as well. A well preserved, mint state coin from 150 years ago is just as beautiful as a gem mint card, IMO.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
One of the biggest wacky pack hobbyists has switched gears almost completely in the last 7 years and now is focused on collecting American paper currency. He recently showed me a binder full of cool bills from the late 1800s and early 1900s, many of which I didn't even know existed. Really cool, though I have no interest in collecting it.