No Turnaround for Heidrick & Struggles

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. (NASDAQ: HSII), one of the world’s leading executive search firms, ought to be able to find a turnaround master to fix the badly broken company. But it continues to employ CEO L. Kevin Kelly, who has done nothing but fail in his job.

Heidrick & Struggles reported that revenue dropped 18% to $122.3 million, compared with the third quarter a year ago. What the company calls “net income” was $1.3 million in the most recent quarter, compared with a loss of $8 million last year. The results were muddied by an impairment charge of $26.3 million last year and a drop in the provisions for income taxes of $12.3 million from last year to this one.

Kelly said:

The improvements we’ve made to our cost structure have resulted in an increase in our year-to-date operating margin despite the revenue challenges we continue to face in the macroeconomic environment. … We believe we are winning a strong share of the C-suite and Board level searches, but clients are still safeguarding their resources related to expansion and growth until the environment becomes more stable, affecting the pace of new hiring decisions. We are steadfastly serving clients with our search and leadership consulting expertise and continue to focus on evolving our business model to foster growth and enhanced profitability.

No evidence can be found that the market believes the effectiveness of this. Shares trade at $12, near a 52-week low and down from a period high of $23.95.

Kelly needs to leave, but the board has done nothing.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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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