Disk-drive component maker Hutchinson Technology Inc. has named Richard Penn as president and CEO, following a succession plan triggered by the retirement of the company's co-founder and longtime board chairman.
Penn, 56, has been with the company since 1981 and is senior vice president and president of the disk-drive components division.
He succeeds Wayne Fortun, who will take over as chairman of the board. The moves will take place Oct. 1, and come as co-founder Jeffrey Green, 72, steps down from the board at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
Green was a 25-year-old technical writer with the computer maker Univac when he and Jon Geiss decided to launch a company in Geiss' hometown of Hutchinson, Minn., to build heaters for rocket guidance systems, according to the company's website. The two set up shop in a chicken coop.
Hutchinson Technology has hit a challenging patch in recent years, due to a worldwide slowdown in the market for computer disk drives. Last month it posted a wider-than-expected third-quarter loss of $13.9 million, or 59 cents per share. The magnitude of the loss sent the stock tumbling, and analyst Mark Miller of Noble Financial Capital Markets predicted at least a year before a return to profitability.
Hutchinson has been struggling for more than three years as a result of a downturn in its business that began in late 2008 as the global economic crisis hit and was followed in 2011 by floods in Thailand that closed a large portion of its manufacturing space there. Widespread layoffs followed.
Penn, who went to undergraduate and graduate school at the University of Minnesota, has held a variety of management positions at the company, including sales and marketing, operations and as president of the biomeasurement division.
Fortun, 63, described Penn as a "highly skilled executive with in-depth knowledge of our business and a keen understanding of the disk-drive industry."
