Why Being #1 Should NOT Be Your Goal

This morning Kathy Chu wrote a Wall Street Journal article titled, "China's Lenovo to Reboot  After Losing PC Crown to HP."   Chu writes:

China’s Lenovo Group is shaking up its operations as it seeks to reclaim the title of global leader in personal computers and shore up its smartphone business.   For the first time in four years, Lenovo—a company that gained acclaim a decade ago for turning around storied U.S. personal-computer maker International Business Machines Corp.—slipped from the top spot this year to No. 2 in the personal-computer market, behind rival HP Inc.  Lenovo has also fallen to No. 8 in the number of smartphones shipped globally, from No. 3 when it acquired another U.S. brand, Motorola, in late 2014.

When I read this article, I asked myself:  Why do firms obsess with being #1 in their market?  Or, perhaps more specifically, why do they obsess with being #1 in market share in their industry?  Yes, Lenovo held the top spot in the personal computer industry for the past four years.  What precisely did that mean for them?  Well, I checked their Annual Report.  Last year, the company reported a net loss.  During the previous year, they generated a slim profit (1.79% profit margin).    Before that, the margins ranged from 1.6% to 2.1% from 2012-2014.  In short, Lenovo has made very little money over the past five years.  Perhaps, you might argue, they generated a decent return on assets despite the low margins.  With strong asset turnover as a low cost producer, they might produce a good return on assets.  Not so much... in 2015, their ROA equaled 3%.   We should not be surprised by these results.  It's not necessarily an indictment of management.  The personal computer industry is one of the lowest profit industries on earth.  If you perform a five forces analysis, you conclude rather quickly that all the elements of the industry structure point to low returns.  It's a very unattractive industry.  

The lesson: Don't obsess over market share.  Don't worry so much about being #1 in volume.  Think instead about the structure of your industry.  If you are in an unattractive industry, you might not want to be #1 in market share. Instead, you may want to find profitable niches and segments within that industry.  By focusing there, you might not lead the industry by volume, but you may produce stronger returns for investors.  

Grandiose goals at Lenovo: Drinking games & hazing rituals?

Did anyone else find this Fortune magazine article about Lenovo a bit disconcerting?    The article describes a "lighthearted drinking game" that occurs each year among top executives at which they set their ambitious goals for the coming year.  The head of human resources even endorsed the ritual!  I understand cultural differences should be respected, but should a global company really be setting management goals while executives engage in "good-natured hazing" rituals?   The phrases in quotes come from Fortune writer Miguel Helft, not me.  Hazing?  Drinking games?  I can see many  executives at leading multinationals cringing when they read these words.  

The article goes on to lavish praise on the Lenovo management team ("a cocksure crew") for the performance it has achieved in recent years:

"Even without a few drinks in them, Lenovo's top executives are a cocksure crew these days, and for good reason: The company's contrarian bet to double down on the PC business has paid off handsomely. In recent years Lenovo invested heavily in R&D and acquisitions. It beefed up its own network of factories, allowing the company to bring innovations to market more quickly than competitors that outsource most of their manufacturing. As a result, Lenovo's growth has outpaced the industry's for the past 16 quarters, and it has tripled in size since the IBM deal to more than $33 billion in sales. This year it's on track to edge out HP to become the world's No. 1 PC maker."

What's missing from this paragraph lavishing praise on the company for its performance?  One little word:  profit.   Yes, the company has grown rapidly. Yes, it has achieved an impressive market share in the PC market.  Has it made any money?   Hmm... that would seem to be a desirable metric on which we should focus.  Late in the article, the author finally gets around to a discussion of margins.  Here's what Helft writes:

"At the same time, Lenovo benefited from its Chinese cultural heritage, in particular the propensity to focus on long-term goals. Lenovo approaches every new market with a similar strategy: pricing products aggressively at first, sacrificing margins. Executives are expected to deliver profitability only after market share gets to double digits. The risky approach has largely paid off. "The company has surprised me over and over," says Alberto Moel, an analyst with Sanford Bernstein. Its continued growth amid the industry's disarray, Moel says, "is a major achievement." But Moel warns that expanding margins, which at 2.5% are about half those of Dell's and HP's PC units, will be harder than management thinks. Such concerns have weighed on the stock, which has been stuck in a narrow range for the past year (its ADRs, now at $18, are down from $23 a share). With net income of $575 million over the past four quarters, Lenovo has a market capitalization of about $9 billion." 

Margins are half of those found at Dell and HP, and as it is, those American rivals have very thin margins in the PC business.  The firm apparently focuses on margins after getting to double-digit market share.  Yet, Lenovo has 15% market share in the PC business.  Will the margins improve?  How much?   Consider that the personal computer industry has been one of the least profitable markets on earth in recent years.   A simple structural analysis of the industry shows that it is highly unattractive - high buyer and supplier power, high threat of substitutes, and intense rivalry.  Increasing margins will be challenging. Lenovo has brought many product innovations to market.  It has developed strong relationships with many corporations and institutional buyers.  It has many positive attributes.  However, it will be challenging to make high profits in the PC business.  As Warren Buffett once said, "When an industry with a reputation for difficult economics meets a manager with a reputation for excellence, it is usually the industry that keeps its reputation intact."

Vertical Integration at Lenovo vs. Outsourcing at Rivals

The Wall Street Journal has an article today about Lenovo's vertical integration strategy.  That strategy stands in stark contrast to many of the firm's rivals in the computer business (including Apple), which have outsourced many aspects of the manufacturing process.   Lenovo CEO says, "Selling PCs is like selling fresh fruit.  The speed of innovation is very fast, so you must know how to keep up with the pace, control inventory, to match supply with demand and handle very fast turnover."  Lenovo's SVP of supply chain says, "Three years ago the whole industry was saying everyone should outsource, that's the future.  [We] came to the conclusion that even though all our other competitors are going in the other direction…we can move faster if we're more vertically integrated." 

I'm surprised by the comments, and frankly, by the strategy.   Most people would agree that Apple is one of the most innovative and highly differentiated companies in the computer industry.  If Apple can achieve that type of rapid innovation without being completely vertically integrated, then why can't Lenovo?  Apple pursues vertical integration on selected components, most importantly on its operating system.  However, Apple does not keep all manufacturing in-house.   Lenovo chooses to use outsiders for its operating system (Microsoft Windows for its PCs and Google's Android for its new tablets).    Yet, Lenovo is manufacturing many hardware components in-house.   Time will tell if the strategy will pay off.   One wonders if the path to successful innovation, though, has more to do with company culture, leadership, and new product development processes, rather than with the extent of vertical integration.