Cerplex CEO Resigning to Join Fortune 500 Company
After leading an extensive restructuring at Cerplex Group Inc. for the last year, Chief Executive James T. Schraith said Tuesday that he is leaving the computer services company to take a position as vice president and general manager of a “high-technology Fortune 500 company.”
Schraith, who declined to name the company he will be joining, arrived at Cerplex exactly one year ago, after he had been ousted as president of AST Research Inc., the giant Irvine computer manufacturer.
Schraith took much of the blame for AST’s manufacturing and operational woes, but is credited with streamlining Cerplex, a Tustin-based company that provides outsourcing repair and parts services to computer manufacturers.
“We sincerely regret Jim’s decision to leave Cerplex,” said the company’s chairman, William Klein, who added he will serve as CEO temporarily until a replacement can be hired. “Our intent is to have senior management maintain the course which Jim has established.”
Under Schraith’s leadership, Cerplex sold its manufacturing business, expanded into Europe by buying a repair depot in France, and consolidated facilities across the United States. In California, for instance, the company shrank from 10 facilities to three over the past year.
Cerplex’s revenues have grown from $144 million in 1995 to a projected $200 million or more this year. And while the company is still struggling to break even, its loss of $868,000 through the first six months of 1996 pales in comparison to the $39-million loss reported in the last six months of 1995.
The company’s stock has shown little improvement on Schraith’s watch, however. After climbing as high as $9 per share last December, it has since sunk to less than $4 per share. After the announcement of Schraith’s departure, the stock fell to a 52-week low of $2.625 in early trading, then closed at $3.625 per share on Tuesday, down 75 cents in trading on the Nasdaq market.
“Clearly, the timing of my leaving is not great,” Schraith said. “But when you see the job and where I’m going, it’s a tremendous opportunity and a step up for me in responsibility.”
Schraith said his new employer will make an announcement of the hiring later in the week. He said he will serve as the company’s vice president and general manager of North America, overseeing domestic sales and marketing, responsibilities similar to those he had for several years at AST.
He said the job will require him to move out of California, and that the company he is joining is a hardware firm in the computer business with several billion dollars in sales.
Schraith, 39, spent nine years at AST, starting as head of the company’s service department and climbing through the ranks to become second in command to AST co-founder Safi Qureshey. But when AST’s losses started to mount, Schraith was pushed out in September 1995, an early casualty in a wave of executive turnovers.
Qureshey himself later stepped down as chief executive to make way for Ian Diery, who was replaced two months ago by AST’s current CEO, Young-Soo Kim.
