Whoever gave the green light to the RP9 needs to be thrown out on the street. I just don't understand what they were thinking. There's absolutely no demand for a desert eagle sized 9mm, how could they not know that?

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
Remington Outdoor, the second-largest U.S. gunmaker has suffered a “rapid” and “sharp” deterioration in sales and a similar drop in profits since January, and faces “continued softness in consumer demand for firearms,” credit analysts at Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings said in a report Friday.

S&P as a result has cut the company’s corporate credit rating — already at a junk-bond-level CCC+ — two full notches, to CCC-, a move likely to make the company’s high-yield debt less attractive to investors and lenders, and force Remington to pay more in interest. The company could face a change in control, bankruptcy, or default on its debt by next year.

A backlog of unsold, unwanted firearms will force Remington to operate at a loss and “pressure the company’s sales and profitability at least through early 2018, resulting in insufficient cash flow for debt service and fixed charges,” unless Remington gives up cash to pay for ongoing operations, S&P adds.

S&P expects “a heightened risk of a restructuring” of Remington’s $575 million senior secured loan and asset-based lending facility, which it is supposed to pay back in 2019.

If Remington defaults on its payments, based on the company’s current value, S&P expects first-lien creditors may receive around 35 cents back from every dollar they have lent or invested. Lower-rated creditors would get back less, or nothing.

Default is not yet “a virtual certainty,” the report added.

Link

Our old friend JAllen certainly called this one...

Remington, which bills itself as America’s oldest gun manufacturer, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time in just over two years.

The filing comes just days after the apparent collapse of talks between the company and the Navajo Nation, which reportedly was considering purchasing Remington’s assets in a prepackaged bankruptcy that would have allowed the company to shed its liabilities. It was unclear from the bankruptcy filing late Monday whether the company had found an alternative buyer.

Remington previously filed for bankruptcy in 2018, citing declining sales. It emerged two months later in control of its lenders including Franklin Resources and JPMorgan Chase. But sales apparently never sufficiently rebounded despite a surge of interest in guns due to the Covid-19 pandemic and nationwide social unrest this year.

The company has also been hobbled by product liability issues including lawsuits stemming from the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, as well as longstanding allegations — denied by the company — of product safety issues with its popular Model 700 rifle, which CNBC has been investigating since 2010.

The new filing, in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Alabama, lists assets and liabilities of between $100 million and $500 million. It also lists a division of Schultze Asset Management, which specializes in distressed companies, as a major shareholder.

Link

I'd love to see someone buy them that actually wants to be in the firearms/ammunition business, and would run the company property. The Navajos did not strike me as that entity.

It's strange who the new owners are. Franklin Resources is a California company, JPMorgan Chase is a New York company (I've actually worked for both).

Has anyone been following this closely enough to have some kind of idea what fixed assets and what fixed commitments come with buying the company? About the only way Remington could be sold to actual gun people at this point is if the whole operation could be pared down, transplanted to a friendlier jurisdiction (like, say, piling everything into Arkansas), and largely rebuilt with a (relative) minimum of hassle and expense. If all the buyer's doing is taking on debt and union contracts then it may be as well to simply let the company die and try to recover assets (including the brand name) from the aftermath of dissolution.

Union contracts can be cancelled in bankruptcy.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
Has anyone been following this closely enough to have some kind of idea what fixed assets and what fixed commitments come with buying the company? About the only way Remington could be sold to actual gun people at this point is if the whole operation could be pared down, transplanted to a friendlier jurisdiction (like, say, piling everything into Arkansas), and largely rebuilt with a (relative) minimum of hassle and expense. If all the buyer's doing is taking on debt and union contracts then it may be as well to simply let the company die and try to recover assets (including the brand name) from the aftermath of dissolution.

Alabama is not a friendly location?

they have (or had) a plant in Kentucky I think, that made the 783, and maybe something else,


the Huntsville location was supposed to be the be all end all type plant, making several brands and types all under one roof,

I thought the corporation was still largely based out of Ilion, New York? Alabama would certainly seem fine to me. The point, though, was that existing costs may be such that it simply makes sense to let the company die and be "reborn" in a corporate sense if there's ever to be a hope for Remington's resurgence.

Failure to adapt, failure to keep up with the market, and failure to maintain quality control.

I'm sure the Remington 700 trigger recall, the R51 abortion, and the YUGE decline in the bread & butter 870 shotguns sealed their fate.

These are all Remington self inflicted wounds and I'm glad to say I don't own anything from Remington, save a couple of old bricks of 22LR I haven't put the effort in to shoot yet.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
I thought the corporation was still largely based out of Ilion, New York? Alabama would certainly seem fine to me. The point, though, was that existing costs may be such that it simply makes sense to let the company die and be "reborn" in a corporate sense if there's ever to be a hope for Remington's resurgence.

Ilion is the headquarters still. Back in the 60’s ( people bought a lot less guns back then than they do today!) there were thousands of employees in NY. And ammo was originally made in Bridgeport Connecticut.
When ammo was moved to Loanoke Arkansas quality took a massive dive.
Today the New York plant ( which in its heyday employed tens of thousands of people) is down to just a few hundred.
Sad times for a once glorious manufacturing company.
While relatively new to the firearm business, the idea of management companies that have no clue about the products they produce, buying companies milking them dry and killing them off is a common thing in many industries

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
Has anyone been following this closely enough to have some kind of idea what fixed assets and what fixed commitments come with buying the company? About the only way Remington could be sold to actual gun people at this point is if the whole operation could be pared down, transplanted to a friendlier jurisdiction (like, say, piling everything into Arkansas), and largely rebuilt with a (relative) minimum of hassle and expense. If all the buyer's doing is taking on debt and union contracts then it may be as well to simply let the company die and try to recover assets (including the brand name) from the aftermath of dissolution.

Remington needs to follow the lead of Ruger and GTFO of New York, and Chapter 7 may be the best route.

Remington has a mix of new and old equipment and new and old products. Any new owner needs to decide which piece of equipment are needed to produce their core products, the 700, the 870, and 1100, plus the Marlin 336 and 1984/5 lever actions. They should jettison the rest, including the Bushmaster AR stuff they retained after gutting that firm. And handguns? Save for building 1911s, have they ever built a successful pistol in the last 80 years (the XP-100 doesn’t count). Once moved and making guns people want, they need to hammer quality HARD. Then th ne owner needs to bring back some really old products like the Rolling Block rifles.

^^^^
They should also keep the Versa
Max/V3 line of shotguns.

Last I heard was that the Navaho Nation made a cash offer to buy Remington, and the shareholders rejected it, mainly because the Tribe wants to change the direction of the business.

Link

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
If you know the electric guitar industry, Remington is like Gibson under Henry J. Buying up innovative companies and driving them into the ground. Quality issues on the bread and butter product, and disastrous introduction of products no one asked for or wanted.

Took the words out of my mouth.

If Americans are buying fewer guns, why are background checks setting new monthly records?

Per NICS, for the data set November 30, 1998 to June 30,2020, CY2020 already has five of the top ten most background checks in a day, and seven of the top 10 most background checks in a week. Source: NICS

^This thread was originally posted in 2017 by a member no longer with us.

quote:

Originally posted by lyman:

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
Has anyone been following this closely enough to have some kind of idea what fixed assets and what fixed commitments come with buying the company? About the only way Remington could be sold to actual gun people at this point is if the whole operation could be pared down, transplanted to a friendlier jurisdiction (like, say, piling everything into Arkansas), and largely rebuilt with a (relative) minimum of hassle and expense. If all the buyer's doing is taking on debt and union contracts then it may be as well to simply let the company die and try to recover assets (including the brand name) from the aftermath of dissolution.

Alabama is not a friendly location?

they have (or had) a plant in Kentucky I think, that made the 783, and maybe something else,


the Huntsville location was supposed to be the be all end all type plant, making several brands and types all under one roof,

Remington was offered substantial tax benefits to locate here. Substantial. Educated work force to hire from, Friendly constitution loving state,, high tech center of the southeast in the heart of an aerospace and defense contracting hub.....and huge tax incentives. However, they never met their hiring numbers and in turn, lost a good deal of those incentives.

They spent some coin on their facilities here. Lots of community and local government support. I know some good guys out there. It’s a shame really.

But that’s venture capital ownership for you.

I’ll think positive and say they weren’t willing to go down that road again and decided that in the best interest of the long term well-being of the company that the best way to go was chapter 11.

The only gun company with Serious money to burn, as far as I know, is Ruger....and their stock is sky high. We’ll see....

quote:

Originally posted by lyman:
they have (or had) a plant in Kentucky I think, that made the 783, and maybe something else,


the Huntsville location was supposed to be the be all end all type plant, making several brands and types all under one roof,

The KY plant was in Hickory, KY about 12 miles from where I live. It too was supposed to be the end all be all. It’s been idle for several years now. I actually heard the building is now a candle factory.

I'm quoting myself here because I'm about to propose an answer to the question implied in that post, who should buy the carcass of Remington out of bankruptcy. Thinking about it, the answer I came up with is Smith and Wesson.

S&W is about to be spun out of the bigger holding company it was part of, mainly because American Outdoor brands didn't wanted to be tainted with the stench of gun manufacturing. It will keep the non-gun parts of the business and send S&W out on it's merry way, hopefully not saddled with too much debt. Generally I consider this a good thing, as it lets S&W concentrate on what it does best. But if S&W is going to concentrate on the gun business, it probably needs to be in more of it. Buying Remington instantly does this.

The biggest plus for S&W would be that it would immediately be a major player in the ammunition business. From a business standpoint, of all the submarkets of the gun business to be in, this would be my favorite. Sell someone a gun, they may never need another gun, however they're going to need ammo for it, and somewhat likely on a continuous basis. SIG finally figures this out. I think the ammo business alone makes this deal viable.

What about the rest of Remington? Smith is not big player in long guns. They do okay in the AR market, but that's pretty much it. With Remington, they have the very well established bolt gun and shotgun lines, and they'd also get Marlin. I'd probably shut down what little AR production Remington does, or convert it to make Smith ARs. They don't need that overlap. But again, Smith would instantly be one of the biggest long gun companies.

As we all know, Remington's pistol lines are shit. Maybe their 1911s are okay, but is there any real interest in any other pistols they make. I'd just shut these down. This is one market that Smith has VERY well covered.

I think the Huntsville plant would be an interesting asset for Smith. If it wanted to reduce it's presence in the northeast, it would give it a ready made location to move production to.

As far as the looming liability from the Sandy Hook lawsuit, I'd try to suck that into the bankruptcy process and cut a deal. The threat would be if the plaintiffs don't take the deal, Remington would likely implode, and they'd likely get little or nothing nothing. And in that final implosion Smith could buy the carcass at that point for even less.

Without crawling into the numbers, I think this makes sense.

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
I'd love to see someone buy them that actually wants to be in the firearms/ammunition business, and would run the company property. The Navajos did not strike me as that entity.

quote:

They do okay in the AR market, but that's pretty much it. With Remington, they have the very well established bolt gun and shotgun lines, and they'd also get Marlin.

For good or for ill, that would probably be the end of the T/C bolt action rifles. Still, it's an intriguing proposition.