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Tony Howard
Tony Howard
has
completed his assignment as the Consultant and acting CEO of a Mexican radio
station. He was hired to address viability, best future course of action
for the business, including a requirement to return to positive cash flows
and profitability, improve a strained banking relationship, bolster internal
accounting and finance, and ensure that a precarious FTC license was not
lost. This was a business on life support, dying a slow and painful death
further exacerbated by a pending divorce between the husband and wife both
50% co-owners of the business. Howard’s leadership resulted in the owners
injecting new seven figure equity, temporary forbearance from the Lender,
and a right-sizing of the business.
This included:
-
Terminating family members in the finance & accounting department, along
with eliminating other unnecessary costs; and
- Focusing
Owner/Management to leverage their strengths:
a.
Understanding the wife as the DJ for morning drive time was the “Franchise
Value”;
b.
Leveraging the wife’s strength with the strong and loyal Mexican community;
and
c.
Having
the wife take a more active role with the sales and marketing department.
This led to:
- A rapid 50% lift
in sponsor revenue resulting from a loyal following coupled with a true
commitment by the Mexican community to support the station; and
- Leveraging the
wife’s relationships for commitments from some of Mexico’s most popular
musicians and booking agents to stage concerts and radio show
interviews, and supply CD’s, tee shirts, caps and song tag line banners.
This resulted
in:
- Company profits
originally running at a negative annualized run rate of $1.5 million
rising to a projected net profit of over $2.7 million; and
- The negotiation of
a final Lender agreement and an extension of the FTC license.
The company was
later sold to a large communications company at a substantial premium. The
original ownership remains
active in the
business today and the station ranks as one of the most popular stations in
the area.
Howard is a
consultant with Prolman Associates’ affiliate
Getzler Henrich
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