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Organic growth expected focus for new NCR CEO

Bill Nuti may have sprung into his reign at Symbol Technologies like a lion, but he predicts a more lamb-like start moving into NCR Corp. as president and CEO.

August 3, 2005

Bill Nuti, the new president and CEO of Dayton, Ohio-based NCR Corp., said Aug. 2 that business at one of the world's largest ATM manufacturers will proceed as usual.

While Nuti's entrance into Holtsville, N.Y.-based Symbol Technologies Inc., where he served as president and CEO since December 2003, was characterized by mammoth changes, Nuti told investors and analysts during a conference call Tuesday he doesn't foresee a need for immediate change at NCR.

Bill Nuti was named NCR's new CEO and president Aug. 1.

"It's a wonderful company that I look forward to leading," he said. "They have a track record with tremendous successes over the last few years, and I'm just going to look at how we can help the company grow in the future."

A self-proclaimed "Mr. Fix-it," Nuti said his experience at NCR will be in striking contrast with his time at Symbol and San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco Systems Inc., where he was involved in 82 acquisitions over his 10 years with the company.

At NCR, large acquisitions won't be the focus, he said. Organic growth in all of the company's businesses, especially Teradata Data Warehousing, on the other hand, will be. "If there are small acquisitions that make sense to help fill the gaps" NCR will consider them, he said. "But my No. 1 focus will be to grow the company organically."

"The company and the businesses - they're very solid," he said. "We've got to stay the course on our cost-structure initiatives … and we will be looking for cost-structure efficiencies. The NCR brand is very solid, and a brand that I think can even be made more global and greater."

Global growth will be a target area for NCR, and Nuti has an impressive track record overseas, which should help catapult NCR's status.

While with Cisco, Nuti served as president of Europe, Middle East and Africa operations and more than doubled Cisco's revenue in that region. Before his EMEA assignment, Nuti led the expansion of Cisco's business operations in Asia Pacific and increased revenue several-fold in a two-year period.

Nuti's experience with Symbol also will be an asset. In fact, Nuti praised Symbol's team for its success in pulling the struggling company back to its feet.

"On the turnaround and growth side, you don't do everything perfectly, but therein lies the learning. I would argue that some of the things that we could have done better at Symbol were learning experiences," he said. "When you get knocked on your ass a few times, you learn."

A hands-on kind of guy

Part of that learning has taught Nuti that he needs to stay close and involved. Like his predecessor, Mark Hurd, who left NCR in March to join Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard Development Co. as president and CEO, Nuti plans to be a hands-on leader.

"I need to stay very close to the business for the next several years," he said. "I like to roll up my sleeves and get in there."

Jim Ringler, who's been serving as interim CEO since Hurd's departure, said Nuti's experience in the technology and service realms with both Cisco and Symbol set him apart from other candidates. "He's had extensive background in the service empire," Ringler said. "And service, next to our Teradata business, is our most important asset."

"Bill walked into some problems at Symbol that tended to be a little deeper than he thought," Ringler said. "But from the Symbol background, Bill was able to get some things restructured … and that background with Cisco and Symbol played well for him. All of that is important for his future, and it matches up with what we are doing with this company."

Kartik Mehta, a financial analyst for Cleveland-based FTN Midwest Research, said he thinks Nuti will operate NCR much the same way Hurd did.

"I think there are some similarities there," Mehta said. "He seems to be a fairly hands-on type of person. I don't think his focus (for the company) is going to change very much. The sense I got from him is that he's going to take the company and continue down the path that it is already on."

Like many watching the industry, though, Mehta doesn't know a great deal about Nuti.

"I don't think a lot of people in the industry had him on the radar (as Hurd's successor)," he said. "They (NCR's board) did a really good job of keeping their candidates under the radar."

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