3M Co. appears to be bouncing back from the recession, but its annual shareholders' meeting Tuesday continued to be a downsized affair.
In 2009, the company eliminated free lunches, gift bags of 3M products and its company store. The break with tradition seemed fitting in a year when 3M cut more than 4,000 jobs and instituted other cost-saving measures to keep thousands more from layoffs.
This year saw the end of another longtime staple, a large display area for showcasing new products. Several -- including new abrasive materials, customized invisible dental braces and advancements in mobile projection and electronic stethoscope technology -- were featured in a video that accompanied CEO George Buckley's remarks.
"Aren't you inspired by these videos?" he asked the crowd of about 500 at St. Paul's RiverCentre, about half the size at last year's annual meeting. Buckley said 3M's strategy of driving growth through innovation is helping it emerge from the recession and become a faster-growing, more entrepreneurial enterprise. The company spent more than $1 billion on research and development last year and plans to spend about $1.4 billion in 2010. Another $100 million has been targeted for new business development, he said.
Buckley also highlighted the company's expansions in China, Russia, India, Singapore and Poland as examples of driving growth through innovation. The expansions were partly responsible for a 25 percent revenue gain in the first quarter. The revenue increase -- the largest year-over-year quarterly gain in 3M's history -- was "an affirmation of our strategic direction," Buckley said.
The stock price has also rebounded, more than doubling from March 2009, when it traded under $42 a share, to its close Tuesday of $85.04.
Despite the good financial news, some shareholders weren't happy about the pared-down nature of the meeting. "It discourages people from coming," said John Kaman, who worked for 3M for 25 years and left when the data-storage business was spun off as Imation Corp. about 15 years ago. Kaman, who retired in 2000, said he didn't care about the lunch and gift bags, but said the company was missing out on an opportunity to create goodwill and market new products by eliminating the displays.
Effective marketing also came up when Buckley fielded questions from shareholders. One man asked why the company couldn't come up with punchier, more customer-friendly names for new products like its pocket-sized mobile projection device, the MPro150. Buckley said it's an area the company is working to improve, conceding that it has tended to market innovative new products as "XYZ123."
