Thursday, November 3, 2011
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Friday, August 19, 2011
Altlantic International Partnership Headlines: Dennis Cochrane lands in education post - Saeo
Cochrane, the former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party and a member of Premier David Alward’s transition team, has already started in the new position, which is a two-year appointment that pays $30,000 annually.
Education Minister Jody Carr said Cochrane’s experience in building relationships will be important in his new position in growing the institute.
“There is a lot of growth potential for AEI but growth needs to be done strategically and with a coordinated approach,” Carr said in a statement.
“Dennis Cochrane’s experience, knowledge and proven track record make him well suited to oversee the execution of AEI’s mandate and the development of a business and expansion strategy for international education in New Brunswick.”
Altlantic International Partnership Headlines: Province sees dollars and ‘sense’ in partnerships with China
Altlantic International Partnership Headlines: MGM gets more time to sell 50 percent ownership in Borgata casino
Altlantic International Partnership Headlines: Dennis Cochrane lands in education post - Saeo
Former St. Thomas University president Dennis Cochrane has accepted a two-year position as the president of Atlantic Education International, an appointment geared at boosting the provincial government’s foreign education program.
Cochrane, the former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party and a member of Premier David Alward’s transition team, has already started in the new position, which is a two-year appointment that pays $30,000 annually.
Education Minister Jody Carr said Cochrane’s experience in building relationships will be important in his new position in growing the institute.
“There is a lot of growth potential for AEI but growth needs to be done strategically and with a coordinated approach,” Carr said in a statement.
“Dennis Cochrane’s experience, knowledge and proven track record make him well suited to oversee the execution of AEI’s mandate and the development of a business and expansion strategy for international education in New Brunswick.”
Altlantic International Partnership Headlines: Dennis Cochrane lands in education post
Sunday, August 14, 2011
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Monday, August 8, 2011
Atlantic International Partnership Headlines: Madrid and Istanbul set to enter 2020 Olympics bidding race
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atlantic international partnership: Dennis Cochrane lands in education post
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Atlantic International Partnership Review: Is Japan Heading for Yet another ‘Lost Decade’?
It absolutely was supposed to become just an additional earthquake, only it registered a scale of 9.0 – and triggered a devastating tsunami.
March 11, 2011 would unquestionably not be forgotten at any time soon by the Japanese men and women since the northern piece on the technologically-advanced nation was thrown into distress. Tsunami waves as higher as ten meters hit the coast and washed absent anything it passed inside of a frightening pace. Aftershocks of smaller sized scales would keep on shaking them for the following number of days.
Obviously, the entire globe was left dumbstruck.
And as in case the earthquake/tsunami combo wasn’t plenty of, a further dilemma sets in: a nuclear plant’s received an issue. Like an overnight sensation, Fukushima grew to become a family name, albeit for every one of the wrong motives.
Now, just after weeks of hanging on the harmony, lots of are worried what would turn out to be of Japan afterwards. Particularly of curiosity would be the foreseeable future state of their economic climate.
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Atlantic International Partnership Headlines: Robotics morphs into more-mainstream investment
BEDFORD, Mass. — Top scientists around the world are trying to improve upon robots, which can already detect bombs, perform surgery and even go into battle.
At iRobot Corp., they’re trying to make a better vacuum.
Of course, iRobot’s scientists do other things too. The company, best known for its Roomba floor vacuum, recently sent machines to Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster to help detect radiation, to the war zone in Afghanistan to find bombs, and to the Gulf of Mexico to locate spilled oil in the water.
But home robots — dominated by vacuums — make up 55 percent of the company’s revenue and are part of the reason iRobot is on a tear. Shares are up 43 percent since the start of the year, and the company earned a profit of $26 million on sales of $401 million last year, up from $3 million on $299 million in revenue the year before.
The company recently announced it had won a contract to make bomb disposal robots for the Navy.
That iRobot, the only public company that focuses purely on robotics, is getting attention from investors indicates that this young industry is becoming more mainstream. As analysts and consumers get more comfortable with robots, more companies might succeed in the space.
“It’s almost like buying Internet companies in the 1990s,” said Alex Hamilton, an analyst with Early Bird Capital who covers iRobot. “The sky’s the limit.”
Not everyone is a fan. A 2008 Consumer Reports review of vacuums found that the Roomba 560 “was among the worst performers at cleaning edges and corners.” On consumer tech site CNET, comments ranged from “always broken, warranty poor” to “It’s awesome! Great for what it costs.”
The company is now trying to boost sales of secondary items, such as pool and gutter cleaners, to go along with its bestselling Roomba and Scooba robots.
Next up: a device on wheels that can follow you around the house like Rosie from “The Jetsons” and someday maybe even bring you a beer. The company predicts an expanding market in robots that assist the country’s aging population.
“No one has ever made money with robots before,” said Chief Executive Colin Angle, a freckle-faced 43-year-old who happens to be married to Erika Ebbel, Miss Massachusetts 2004. “But ours create more value than they cost to build.”
The growth is evident at the company’s headquarters in a Bedford, Mass., office park, where young men in ties and white shirts follow a tour on their first day of orientation. Awards from the last decade sit along the walls: gold-plated and silver Roombas, a crystal Entrepreneur of the Year award for Angle. IRobot now employs about 650 people.
The success is new for a company that teetered on the edge of survival for its first decade and a half. Founded in 1990 by Angle, MIT professor Rodney Brooks and graduate student Helen Greiner, the company’s mission was initially vague: to make practical robots that could be useful in everyday lives.
At the time, few investors believed this was a profitable venture, so the three put company expenses on their credit cards, and struggled.
“We were unfundable,” said Angle, walking through an exhibit in the company’s headquarters of experiments from iRobot’s past — a baby doll robot, a Zamboni-like vacuum, a furry creature that runs away from humans when it senses anger.
IRobot didn’t receive its first venture funding until 1998. Even then, its endeavors were disjointed, spread across eight divisions: robots that could vacuum floors, entertain children and work on oil wells, to name just a few. It sent robots to work in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the government contracts weren’t profitable enough to support the flailing consumer side.
The company nearly went under in 2002 as it tried to find retailers that would stock the newly completed Roomba. Just when its founders had given up hope, the Brookstone retailing chain called, saying that a test run of the machines had gone well and that consumer demand was increasing.
“We went from the lowest of the low to the most exciting time,” Angle said. “Suddenly, things started to work.”
Even after the company went public in 2005, its financial problems continued. Its stock slid, precipitously at times, to a low of $7 in 2009 as the company burned through cash because of manufacturing issues and the high price of nickel, which is used to make batteries.
A new chief financial officer, John Leahy, has helped the company better manage its finances, analysts say, as has a focus on what it does best: robotic vacuums. Demand is growing overseas as the company expands into Latin America and Europe. International sales grew 70 percent in 2010, and international home robot revenue made up two-thirds of the company’s home robot sales.
The military machines have been a success too: IRobot is one of only two companies that provided robots to the military that have actually ended up on the ground, said Barbara Coffey, managing director at Brigantine Advisors, an investment research company. And the contracts keep coming in. Aside from the Navy deal, the Army said in March that it had ordered 76 small unmanned ground vehicles from iRobot.
“The company during that period really did grow from focused on the next flashy thing to the nuts and bolts of running a business,” Coffey said. “Things like quality assurance and all the heavy lifting stuff came to bear.”
IRobot hopes next to enter the health care field with Ava, essentially a device on wheels that works with existing tablet computers and can follow people around, sensing walls and other obstacles. If someone is trying to reach a senior citizen who isn’t answering the phone, for example, Ava can go find the person, Angle said.
The company is inviting iPad developers to get into the game, designing apps for Ava.
It’s just one way the company is expanding outside of cleaning products to make robots a more common presence in our lives.
“Nearly 100 percent of robots are going to help us do more and more and be part of a better life,” Angle said. “It’s the stuff of dreams.”
Atlantic International Partnership Funding Group Builder Stocks Fall as Home Price Decline Persists
AIFG has established a unique and innovative concept in the mortgage industry (Partnership Servicing) that is ideally suited to a challenging economy and real estate market. If you don’t know about our concept, then here’s an opportunity to learn more.
Analysts expect further price declines heading into the summer season, which could further slow the recovery for an industry which is coming off the worst two years for home construction dating to 1959.
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index released Tuesday shows that home prices dropped in 19 cities from December to January, the sixth consecutive month that the index fell. A majority of the metro areas tracked by the index now have home prices at levels dating back to 2003, just as the housing boom began. In four cities -- Atlanta, Las Vegas, Detroit and Cleveland -- home values are at their lowest point in 11 years.
The report followed a Commerce Department announcement on Friday that new-home sales plunged in February for the third month in a row.
However, an analyst with KeyBanc Capital Markets found some positive news in the S&P/Case-Shiller report. With seasonal adjustments factored in, just 12 of the 20 cities in the index experienced month-over-month price declines, compared with 19 of 20 cities three months earlier, analyst Kenneth Zener said in a research note.
Zener said that statistic suggests that a partial recovery is under way. However, he expects home prices to continue declining on a month-to-month basis into June, "as sellers court tepid buyers amid a still-large supply of inventory."
The housing market has recently been slower to recover than other areas of the economy, in part due to the expiration of government programs to spur more homebuying. Zener said he doesn't expect further government moves to encourage buying through tax credits. However, he expects indirect government support to continue through lending agencies, loan modification programs, and government purchases of mortgage-backed securities.
Shares of Lennar Corp. saw the steepest decline among major homebuilder stocks, dropping 68 cents, or 3.4 percent, to close at $19.07. Lennar on Tuesday posted a surprise fiscal first-quarter profit, but also reported that it delivered fewer homes and saw a decline in new home orders.
A look at the performance of other major homebuilder stocks:
D.R. Horton Inc. lost 20 cents, or nearly 2 percent, to $11.95.
MDC Holdings Inc. fell 53 cents, or about 2 percent, to $25.84.
KB Home declined 25 cents, or 2 percent, to $12.94.
Ryland Group Inc. dropped 30 cents, or nearly 2 percent, to $16.41.
Standard Pacific Corp. fell 9 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $3.74.
Toll Brothers Inc. fell 4 cents to $20.44, while PulteGroup Inc. dipped a penny to $7.65.
Meritage Homes Corp. rose 8 cents to $24.27. Beazer Homes USA Inc. slipped 3 cents to $4.66 and Hovanian Enterprises Inc. lost 3 cents to $3.58.
Meanwhile, the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index finished up 0.7 percent on the day.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Atlantic International Partnership Headlines: Right man for the job? Gordon Brown gets new economics post to try to save the world from another financial crisis
New job: Gordon Brown will work at the World Economic Forum
Gordon Brown accepted a new international economic job yesterday – and said his task is to save the world from the next financial crisis.
The former prime minister was handed a post co-ordinating strategy for the World Economic Forum, a collection of leading politicians and businessmen.
The unpaid position will come with a staffing allowance of £750,000 a year.
It comes after David Cameron and George Osborne made clear they would veto any move to make Mr Brown the £270,000-a-year head of the International Monetary Fund, a job for which he has been lobbying.
Mr Brown’s spokesman was quick to say that his new role will be to ‘stop the next financial crisis’. His remarks echoed Mr Brown’s assertion that he ‘saved the world’ after the international credit crunch of 2009.
Tory deputy chairman Michael Fallon said Mr Brown has yet to face up to the legacy of debt that he bequeathed to taxpayers. ‘This is a case of putting the arsonist in charge of the fire station,’ he said.
‘It beggars belief that somebody who is yet to apologise for the mess he made in our finances should be advising the rest of the world.’
Mr Brown will join the World Economic Forum as chairman of the Policy and Initiatives Co-ordination Board.
Strategy: Irish rock star Bono talks with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo about African poverty at the World Economic Forum in January 2006
Critics will point out that the role will be an addition to Mr Brown’s duties as an MP, a job he intends to retain. Since he quit as PM last May, he has not attended any of the major budget debates in the Commons and has one of the worst voting records of any MP.
Mr Brown’s new job, unlike the IMF post he craved, lacks concrete powers. The WEF is a private organisation and while Mr Brown can cajole politicians and businessmen to work together, he has little leverage. By contrast, the IMF post would have put him in charge of a worldwide organisation charged with distributing billions to the developing world.
Atlantic International Partnership Headlines: Why Jaguar gives us reasons to be cheerful
Many years ago, when the Bay City Rollers were still described as “heart-throbs” and Margaret Thatcher had just replaced Edward Heath as Conservative Party leader, there was a joke in America about Jaguar cars.
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As we reveal today, that expansion is hopefully about to hit a higher gear. Jaguar Land Rover is well advanced in planning for a new engine plant in either the Midlands or South Wales. Although an as yet unnamed site in India could still overcome the two UK favourites, the fact that it would mean shipping the engines back to the UK to be put together with the cars that are assembled here must make it an outsider.
It is unlikely that Jaguar Land Rover will be looking for direct Government support for the plant. After getting entangled in a turf war between the then trade secretary Lord Mandelson’s business department and the Treasury over a £290m rescue package in 2008, it would be well advised to raise any money needed this time in the markets. As Sheffield Forgemasters found to its cost, relying on public grants is a risky game.
What Jaguar Land Rover does need is the type of business-friendly environment conducive to growth. That means more from the Government than simply saying you are business friendly.
It must be hoped that George Osborne and Vince Cable – who have both visited Jaguar Land Rover plants in the past year – do all they can to ensure Tata Motors does choose to bring at least 1,000 new employment opportunities to the UK. Beyond that headline number there are, of course, all the extra supply-chain jobs at local firms which will be linked to the new factory. Do not underestimate either the “good news” boost of a global firm committing to Britain.
There is much talk from the Government about the need to “rebalance the economy” away from an over-reliance on the financial sector and towards manufacturing. This is an opportunity to put such talk into action.
Atlantic International Partnership Headlines: The United States faces a crisis not seen since the Depression
The poisonous atmosphere surrounding the role of the state and taxation allows no realistic budget bargaining
Will Hutton in America
The Observer, Sunday 24 April 2011
Maybe it’s because Boston is different, a semi-detached city in one of the US’s most liberal states. But the news that the world’s biggest economy had had its creditworthiness challenged for the first time by the upstart rating agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) hardly seemed to register with the locals.
No one I met fulminated about loss of economic sovereignty or that S&P, whose purblind approval of junk mortgage debt as triple A was one of the causes of the financial crisis, had finally over-reached itself. Bostonians seemed unconcerned. Perhaps this was because it was just one more surreal moment in the pantomime that is American economic and political life.
That was how the markets judged the news. There was a momentary tremor in the Dow Jones. Some analysts shrugged it off; others thought it profoundly serious. But soon the markets were on the rise again as if nothing had happened.
The Obama administration played it down. Tim Geithner, the secretary of state for the Treasury, said that S&P was behind the political curve; the prospects for a bipartisan deal were now better than they had been for months. If the hope was to provoke a change in the debate about the US’s record budget deficit, S&P must have been disappointed.
The Republicans rehearsed their battle cry that Obama was mortgaging the future and that the only plan in town to respond to the agency’s “wake-up call” was their own – to take federal spending back to pre-modern levels, while offering further tax relief to the rich. To all this Democrats are ferociously opposed.
You can see why. The Republican position, set out in detail by Paul Ryan, the Republican chair of the congressional budget committee, is not really a budget plan at all. It is a map for dismantling the US state so that it would do little more than provide threadbare pensions and healthcare for the very poorest and almost nothing else, with even defence in the line of fire. Democrats believe in a different role for the state and that the boom story with no role for public spending on science and infrastructure is a nonsense. It is a battle for the very soul of the United States.
For months, President Obama has played the conciliator. In December, he agreed to extend the Bush 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that have so grievously undermined the US’s long-run budgetary position, once again giving ground and so implicitly accepting the logic of the Republican position.
But to general surprise, 10 days ago he showed unexpected spine in a set-piece speech. Turning on his tormentors, he declared that the state was essential to economic growth and what he described as the US’s social compact. Its dismantlement was off-limits on his watch. There would be painful cuts under his deficit-reduction plan, including cuts to defence, but it would involve tax increases for the rich. Warren Buffett, he declared, did not need another tax cut.
The battle is about to become very real. On 16 May, the US will exceed the legal $14.3 trillion limit for its national debt. There has to be a vote to allow it to rise. What worries S&P is that the two parties are still far apart, with the Republicans taking positions that seem to allow no room for reason or compromise.
The threat of the US government closing down will probably be averted, but the poisonous atmosphere surrounding the role of the state and taxation allows no realistic budget bargaining. In the gap, debt and deficits will carry on rising unsustainably, hence the first “negative watch” on US public debt.
The Republican position is part sheer lunacy, but in part it also draws on deep roots and it is hard to disentangle the two. For lunacy, look no further than the debate about whether or not Barack Obama was born in Honolulu and thus eligible to be president. I arrived in the US as billionaire property dealer and publicity-hungry Donald Trump, plainly positioning himself for the Republican presidential nomination race, was saying that his newly employed investigators into Obama’s birth were discovering some interesting material, although he refused to say quite what. Obama’s birth certificate is on public release and Dr Chiyome Fukino, former director of health in Hawaii, has repeatedly said that it is genuine .
Trump must know it is a slur but can’t resist it because a segment of the public is so hungry for such material, even if it is a palpable lie. His approval ratings have soared. And this is where the debate about the debt intersects with the daffy birther movement (those who question whether Obama really is an American and thus eligible for the presidency). A large constituency in the US is disoriented by the continual squeeze on middle-class American living standards, the fall-out of the banking crisis and the rise of China. Taken together, they spell a US in decline and it is felt personally. For them, the US’s problems stem from having strayed from the ideals of the founding fathers and the lessons from the frontier .
This is why Sarah Palin’s homespun, God-fearing philosophy formed in the last American frontier – Alaska – has such political resonance. Her TV series, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, has her climbing rock faces and cooking in the wild, relying on her own capabilities and faith to get her through. No dependency culture here. More of that is what is now needed, not Obama’s cleverness and moderate faith in government. Obviously he can’t have been born an American.
It is powerful, but it is deluded and self-delusion runs deep in the US. Even the smart people at MIT, where so much US innovative technology originates, buy the cultural assertion that their success is all about individual entrepreneurship and brilliance; the cumulative trillions of US government grants are a side-show. Too few see growing federal debt as the necessary flipside of the banking crisis. The state is cast as the public enemy, not its friend.
Atlantic International Partnership Headlines: Teaching new dogs old tricks
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so thrilled in my life,” he says afterward. “And that Lincoln Memorial — gee whiz! Mr. Lincoln, there he is. Just looking straight at you as you come up those steps. Just sitting there like he was waiting for somebody to come along.”
For all their talk of the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and core principles, you’d have thought that the current freshman class of Congress, the sprouted seed of Tea Partyers and the 2010 midterms, would have made a similar tour their first priority on arrival. And for all I know, many of them did just that. But for some, the siren song of cash and influence has proven stronger, already luring them onto the rocks of privilege and corruption that lurk just inside the Beltway. They’ve made a beeline not for the hallowed shrines of patriots’ pride but for the elegant suites of K Street lobbyists, where the closest its residents have been to Lincoln is the bearded face peering from the $5 bill — chump change. So much for fiercely resisting the wicked, wicked ways of Washington. These new members were seduced faster than Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate.”
In an April 2 editorial, the New York Times reported:
Since last year’s Republican victories, nearly 100 lawmakers have hired former lobbyists as their chiefs of staff or legislative directors, according to data compiled by two watchdog groups, the Center for Responsive Politics and Remapping Debate. That is more than twice as many as in the previous two years.
In that same period, 40 lobbyists have been hired as staff members of Congressional committees and subcommittees, the boiler rooms where legislation is drafted. That again dwarfs the number from the previous two years. While some of those lobbyist-staffers were hired by Democrats, the vast majority are working for Republicans… In many cases, those hiring lobbyists were Tea Party candidates who vowed to end business as usual in Washington.
Many of the Republican freshmen in the House won election vowing to shake up Washington, so it’s a little surprising that many of them seem to be playing an old Washington game: raising much of their campaign money from corporate political action committees.For example, freshman star Kristi Noem of South Dakota — one of the two newbies anointed as liaison to the Republican House leadership — raised $169,000 in PAC money, including cash from General Electric, Boeing, Raytheon, Wells Fargo, Fedex, AFLAC, Altria (the parent company of Philip Morris and Kraft Foods) and pharmaceutical giants Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline.
More than 50 members of the class of 87 GOP freshmen took in more than $50,000 from PACs during the first quarter of 2011, according to new campaign disclosure reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. Eighteen of the lawmakers took in more than $100,000.
According to the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, Rep. Noem, who pledged to voters not to make Washington her home, held at least 10 fundraisers in D.C. during that first quarter, her first months as a member of Congress. They included two dinners at the Capital Grille, at which attendees donated between $1,500 and $2,000 apiece, and lunch at We, the Pizza on Pennsylvania Avenue.
A CQ MoneyLine study reports that during the first three months of the year the 87 Republican freshmen pulled in a total of $14.7 million from individuals as well as PACs. Leading the crowd was Diane Black of Tennessee with $926,000, but more than two-thirds of it was her own money. In second place was West Virginia’s David B. McKinley, with $540,000.
Rep. McKinley was one of nine new GOP members spotlighted this week by the website Politico as members who have done things “the Washington way, using a legislative process they once railed against to try to assist donors, protect favored industries or settle scores with their political enemies.”
Three weeks after his swearing in, McKinley introduced a bill to overturn an Environmental Protection Agency ruling that vetoed an Army Corps of Engineers water permit for mountaintop mining, the practice that blasts the tops off mountains and sends debris raining down on communities, streams and rivers. The bill has ramifications for the entire mining industry, but the specific mine in question is owned by Arch Coal. Its PAC contributed $2,500 to McKinley’s 2010 election campaign and another thousand so far this year.
The mining industry was McKinley’s largest corporate campaign contributor — $51,751. And a month after he took office, Politico reported, he introduced another bill “that would block a proposed EPA regulation against coal-ash bricks and drywall, materials architectural and engineering firms — such as one founded by McKinley — routinely recommend in construction project bids.”
Others cited by the Politico investigation include freshmen Bill Johnson of Ohio and Morgan Griffith of Virginia. They, too, have been going to bat for mine executives. The mining sector was Johnson’s biggest corporate donor at $25,146; same with Griffith, who received $40,450.
Texas freshman Bill Flores has been going after the Interior Department’s procedures for offshore oil drilling permits, trying to get the department to impose tighter deadlines and pay back billions in leasing rights to oil companies whose permits are denied. He’s the former president and CEO of an exploratory oil firm. Its employees were his second largest campaign contributor and the oil and gas industry threw in more than $200,000.
In rebuttal, the office of each congressman has generated the appropriate, high-minded spin. “West Virginia is coal, and coal is West Virginia,” said McKinley’s spokeswoman. “He’s doing what he said he would — fighting tooth and nail to stop the EPA’s war on coal …” Rep. Flores told Politico, “This is an issue that is very important to me as I have been involved in finding solutions to America’s long-term energy independence for the last thirty years.”
And so it goes. At this rate, if the Abraham Lincoln so venerated by the idealistic Mr. Smith is still at his memorial hoping for someone to come along, someone with integrity and dedication to the people and not the almighty dollar, he’s going to have a long wait.
The new dogs have learned the old tricks of Capitol Hill with remarkable speed, and their big business masters, armed with their Supreme Court-sanctioned ability to throw bottomless bags of money around, have more control of the leash than ever.
Michael Winship, senior writing fellow at Demos and president of the Writers Guild of America, East, is former senior writer of “Bill Moyers Journal” on PBS.
Atlantic International Partnership Headlines: Robotics morphs into more-mainstream investmentAtlantic International Partnership Headlines: Robotics morphs into more-mainstream investment
BEDFORD, Mass. — Top scientists around the world are trying to improve upon robots, which can already detect bombs, perform surgery and even go into battle.
At iRobot Corp., they’re trying to make a better vacuum.
Of course, iRobot’s scientists do other things too. The company, best known for its Roomba floor vacuum, recently sent machines to Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster to help detect radiation, to the war zone in Afghanistan to find bombs, and to the Gulf of Mexico to locate spilled oil in the water.
But home robots — dominated by vacuums — make up 55 percent of the company’s revenue and are part of the reason iRobot is on a tear. Shares are up 43 percent since the start of the year, and the company earned a profit of $26 million on sales of $401 million last year, up from $3 million on $299 million in revenue the year before.
The company recently announced it had won a contract to make bomb disposal robots for the Navy.
That iRobot, the only public company that focuses purely on robotics, is getting attention from investors indicates that this young industry is becoming more mainstream. As analysts and consumers get more comfortable with robots, more companies might succeed in the space.
“It’s almost like buying Internet companies in the 1990s,” said Alex Hamilton, an analyst with Early Bird Capital who covers iRobot. “The sky’s the limit.”
Not everyone is a fan. A 2008 Consumer Reports review of vacuums found that the Roomba 560 “was among the worst performers at cleaning edges and corners.” On consumer tech site CNET, comments ranged from “always broken, warranty poor” to “It’s awesome! Great for what it costs.”
The company is now trying to boost sales of secondary items, such as pool and gutter cleaners, to go along with its bestselling Roomba and Scooba robots.
Next up: a device on wheels that can follow you around the house like Rosie from “The Jetsons” and someday maybe even bring you a beer. The company predicts an expanding market in robots that assist the country’s aging population.
“No one has ever made money with robots before,” said Chief Executive Colin Angle, a freckle-faced 43-year-old who happens to be married to Erika Ebbel, Miss Massachusetts 2004. “But ours create more value than they cost to build.”
The growth is evident at the company’s headquarters in a Bedford, Mass., office park, where young men in ties and white shirts follow a tour on their first day of orientation. Awards from the last decade sit along the walls: gold-plated and silver Roombas, a crystal Entrepreneur of the Year award for Angle. IRobot now employs about 650 people.
The success is new for a company that teetered on the edge of survival for its first decade and a half. Founded in 1990 by Angle, MIT professor Rodney Brooks and graduate student Helen Greiner, the company’s mission was initially vague: to make practical robots that could be useful in everyday lives.
At the time, few investors believed this was a profitable venture, so the three put company expenses on their credit cards, and struggled.
“We were unfundable,” said Angle, walking through an exhibit in the company’s headquarters of experiments from iRobot’s past — a baby doll robot, a Zamboni-like vacuum, a furry creature that runs away from humans when it senses anger.
IRobot didn’t receive its first venture funding until 1998. Even then, its endeavors were disjointed, spread across eight divisions: robots that could vacuum floors, entertain children and work on oil wells, to name just a few. It sent robots to work in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the government contracts weren’t profitable enough to support the flailing consumer side.
The company nearly went under in 2002 as it tried to find retailers that would stock the newly completed Roomba. Just when its founders had given up hope, the Brookstone retailing chain called, saying that a test run of the machines had gone well and that consumer demand was increasing.
“We went from the lowest of the low to the most exciting time,” Angle said. “Suddenly, things started to work.”
Even after the company went public in 2005, its financial problems continued. Its stock slid, precipitously at times, to a low of $7 in 2009 as the company burned through cash because of manufacturing issues and the high price of nickel, which is used to make batteries.
A new chief financial officer, John Leahy, has helped the company better manage its finances, analysts say, as has a focus on what it does best: robotic vacuums. Demand is growing overseas as the company expands into Latin America and Europe. International sales grew 70 percent in 2010, and international home robot revenue made up two-thirds of the company’s home robot sales.
The military machines have been a success too: IRobot is one of only two companies that provided robots to the military that have actually ended up on the ground, said Barbara Coffey, managing director at Brigantine Advisors, an investment research company. And the contracts keep coming in. Aside from the Navy deal, the Army said in March that it had ordered 76 small unmanned ground vehicles from iRobot.
“The company during that period really did grow from focused on the next flashy thing to the nuts and bolts of running a business,” Coffey said. “Things like quality assurance and all the heavy lifting stuff came to bear.”
IRobot hopes next to enter the health care field with Ava, essentially a device on wheels that works with existing tablet computers and can follow people around, sensing walls and other obstacles. If someone is trying to reach a senior citizen who isn’t answering the phone, for example, Ava can go find the person, Angle said.
The company is inviting iPad developers to get into the game, designing apps for Ava.
It’s just one way the company is expanding outside of cleaning products to make robots a more common presence in our lives.
“Nearly 100 percent of robots are going to help us do more and more and be part of a better life,” Angle said. “It’s the stuff of dreams.”