The share price of Subex, the Indian business assurance vendor, continues to slide to new lows. Trading was negative on Monday and Tuesday, with falls of nearly 5% recorded on both days. The share price has fallen below INR6 for the first time, having reached INR5.70 at its lowest point.
I am sadly reminded of the tagline that Subex used for their 2011-12 annual report: “nurturing a strong foundation”. Since then, most of the top management team has been uprooted. A quick glance at the current exec team reveals the transformation that has taken place during the last year. Only three of the current execs are survivors from the top team per last year’s report: Vinod Kumar (COO), Sekharan Y. Menon (Chief People and Administrative Officer) and David Halvorson (General Counsel). The plan may have been to chop away the dead wood, but there have been few signs of the kind of fresh thinking and innovation that caused Subex to grow into a market leader. Poor results for the 2012-13 financial year, with no sign of a turnaround in the final quarter, signal that Subex needs a new strategy to reverse their decline. So far, Subex’s leaders have yet to provide that kind of leadership.
