Executive at Boyds Wheels Resigns

Pressed by a declining stock price and reportedly out of step with management’s style, the chief operating officer of Boyds Wheels Inc. has resigned “for personal reasons,” the company said Monday.

The departure of Stanley Clark comes a year after he joined Boyds Wheels and less than two months after the Stanton custom auto and motorcycle wheel maker’s stock began tumbling on word of manufacturing problems that hurt its 1996 profit.

Rex Ours, chief financial officer at Boyds Wheels, said Clark should not be made the fall guy for the company’s manufacturing woes. Ours said that he, Clark and company founder Boyd Coddington have “all along” taken joint responsibility for the manufacturing inefficiencies.

Clark, who had been operations manager at several large companies before joining Boyds, “didn’t fit” with Coddington’s hands-on management style, said Mark Corcoran, an analyst with Red Chip Review in Portland, Ore.

“He wasn’t happy and felt he needed a change,” Ours said.

Clark, who left in mid-March, could not be reached for comment. The manufacturing specialist was hired to help strengthen the company’s management structure. He guided Boyds Wheels through an expansion that has increased its manufacturing capabilities by 50%.

Company officials have insisted that the manufacturing problems were temporary and have been solved, but the once high-flying stock’s price has remained weak.

It closed at $6.3125 a share in light Nasdaq market trading Monday, up 6.25 cents for the day and 63% below its November high of $16.875 a share.

While sales for 1996 rose a healthy 51%, the stock fell because the company’s $1.3-million annual profit didn’t meet analysts’ profit expectations at the time--even though the profit was 41% higher than the year before.

The company took a $258,000 loss for its fourth quarter because of the manufacturing problems and a drop in income from overseas sales because of unfavorable exchange rates in Japan.

Several analysts lowered their earnings estimates after Boyds Wheels said its annual profit would be lower than expected. They have not revised their estimates since Coddington said that the manufacturing problems had been fixed.

Coddington said Monday that the continued softness might stem from investor wariness about the company’s upcoming first-quarter results.