Revlon May Go Away

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Revlon May Go Away

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Revlon has been one of America’s primary beauty brands. Founded in 1932, it has fallen into Chapter 11. Its debt load recently sat at $3 billion, and there is nothing about the current financials of the company that will make that go away. Revlon’s assets may be liquidated, meaning the brand will disappear.
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A private equity firm, MacAndrews & Forbes, bought Revlon in 1987. The transaction price was $850 million, close to $1.6 billion today. Its management of Revlon has been a dumpster fire for most of its years as the owner. McAndrews & Forbes put more money into Revlon, but temporary improvements weren’t enough to solve balance sheet problems. And the improvements were genuinely temporary.

Revlon’s problems can be summed up in its most recent quarterly report. Revenue fell 10% to $468 million. The net loss was $153 million. Revlon received $575 million in debtor-in-possession financing. It will burn through that at a rapid pace.

Traders have tried to make money on the stock’s volatility. It is a dangerous game. The shares traded as high as $11.86 in the last year. They now change hands at $.43 and can swing by double digits on a single day. Since the company is bankrupt, the common should have no value. That means trading is pure speculation.
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Revlon, which recently cut a deal to exit bankruptcy, won’t be out for long. Its sales are too weak and its management is too poor. Revlon won’t be around much longer.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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