Product Lines, Balance Sheet Revitalized
When Rich Beyer became CEO of Freescale in March 2008, the company's financial situation was dire. Owing to a 2006 leveraged buyout (LBO), Freescale was carrying more than $10 billion in debt, much of it coming due in 2013. The company's cellular business, which was generating more than $1 billion annually, had lost most of the designs at Motorola, its only major customer. The automotive business had lost a major engine-control unit (ECU) design at General Motors—a loss that would start depressing revenue the following year. And the networking unit was executing so poorly that it had been forced to cancel its entire 65nm generation of PowerPC processors.