Increasing US Gun Permit Checks And Relaxed Concealed Carry Laws Create Potential For Profits In Selected Defense Stocks: An Exclusive Interview With The CEO Of Smith & Wesson
November 14, 2011 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published Aerospace and Defense Report offering a timely review of the Aerospace/Defense sector. This Special Report contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers. Please find an excerpt below.
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P. James Debney joined Smith & Wesson in November 2009 as President of the company's firearms division. In September 2011, he was promoted to President, CEO and board Member for parent company Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation. He has amassed over 16 years of management experience and a track record of developing and executing sales and marketing strategies that sustainably grow the top line while working throughout an organization to implement efficiencies that deliver profitability.
He is also seasoned in multifactory, multinational organizations that address both consumer and business-to-business environments. Mr. Debney served as President of Presto Products Company, a 500 million plastic products business unit formerly of Alcoa Consumer Products. During his tenure he created and executed long- and short-term sales and marketing and operations strategies that delivered increases in both revenue and profitability. Mr. Debney oversaw all aspects of the growing business, which is composed of four business units with five manufacturing facilities in the United States and partnerships in Asia.
TWST: Would you talk about your outlook for the remainder of the year and heading into 2012?
Mr. Debney: We are in a quiet period now, so very difficult to talk about. I can provide some industry indications and how they are historically related to occurrences, let's say. So if you take the primary indicator, which is NICS, the background checks performed through the FBI when a consumer purchases a firearm, that number has had very strong year-over-year growth that has continued even after the surge period that occurred in late 2008 and into 2009, reflecting strong growth in the firearms industry. Couple that with trends toward concealed carry, which we believe are driven by the need for self-protection in the current environment, where municipalities have fewer funds available to support the current need. We believe the result is that people are generally taking responsibility for protecting themselves. This seems to be supported by many states which appear to be much more willing to allow concealed carry of firearms by citizens. I think there's now only one state remaining that doesn't allow concealed carry. Wisconsin was one of the latest ones to recently allow concealed carry.
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