The new strategic vision of one of the FTSE 100’s oldest, if not necessarily largest, most renowned or even memorable companies, Electrocomponents PLC (LSE:ECM), brought Doc Brown and Marty McFly to mind for some children of the 80s.
In our office anyway.
Chiefly this was because the management there have decided to go back to the future with a name change to RS Group PLC.
Great Scott! Without being too critical, I hope they did not pay consultants too much to come up with the new moniker, which if anything is not likely to make the company stand out from its blue chip peers like BP, BP, ITV, SSE, BAE, HSBC, CRH, DCC, WPP, M&G, B&M (not to mention those better known by their initials like GSK, LSE, IAG - and I still don’t know how I feel about abrdn).
However, the RS name does at least have history, being one of the earliest acronyms in the company’s early days.
JH Waring and PM Sebestyen, Jewish émigrés who fled to London to escape Hitler, founded Radiospares in 1937 to offer radio repair services, using unbranded parts from major manufacturers.
In the Hollywood biopic, I can imagine one of the pair styled as Doc Brown: “If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour 85 years old, you’re gonna see some serious sh*t.”
Hop in the DeLorean and zooming the eight and a half decades to 2022 and chief executive officer Lindsley Ruth is similarly painting optimistic pictures for investors, though perhaps without the swears.
Indeed, his strategic revamp goes under the humble and unassuming title of “Our Journey to Greatness”, with Doc Ruth saying the company's ambition as an industrial equipment supplier is “making amazing happen for a better world”.
Depending on their levels of scepticism and their level of knowledge of the Back to the Future franchise, investors' responses were either: “Since when can weathermen CEOs predict the weather next year, let alone the future?” or “I finally invest in something that works!”