Smart Technologies' Nancy Knowlton and David Martin are pictured in Calgary, March 8, 2007.Mike Sturk/The Canadian Press
Nearly four years since going public in a $660-million (U.S.) deal, the husband and wife duo who built Calgary's Smart Technologies Inc. from scratch no longer have a hand in any of the company's day-to-day decision making.
Effective immediately, David Martin and Nancy Knowlton have resigned their board seats, a move that comes two years after Ms. Knowlton first stepped down as the company's chief executive officer.
Their departures come as Smart tries to rebuild its image following a disastrous run that saw its shares plummet as low as $1.35 last year. The company first went public at $17 per share in July 2010, earning a valuation of more than $2-bilion.
Smart, which is best-known for selling interactive whiteboards that are used in classrooms around the world, saw its value fall off a cliff almost immediately after listing and has struggled to turn itself around. The big problem: the vast majority of its sales are made to school boards, and governments have been cash-strapped since the financial crisis.
With Ms. Knowlton and Mr. Martin now completely out of the picture, the company plans to keep expanding its enterprise services, which offers products such as video-conferencing to businesses. One of its newest products is the SMART Room, a turn-key video-conferencing system for boardrooms which comes with a touch-enabled display and a high-definition wide-angle camera .
However, the enterprise business still only comprises between 20 and 25 per cent of what the company describes as "core sales," so the education segment still matters, and its sales continue to slow. The only silver lining is that they aren't cooling nearly as quickly as they once were.
Still, because they remain such a big part of the business, chief executive officer Neil Gaydon could only say the company is "cautious in our outlook" last quarter, despite his best efforts to instill investor confidence.
Although Mr. Martin and Ms. Knowlton are no longer on the board, they still have a say in big business decisions because they own 24 per cent of the company's shares. Yet their control has been diluted because the company's multiple voting shares have been converted into standard common shares. The company's stock fell nearly 8 per cent on Monday.
Private equity firm APAX Partners owns 31 per cent of Smart, and Intel Corp. owns 14 per cent of the company.
Tim Kiladze