What’s up with Hatteras?

The WARN act requires companies with 100 or more employees to file a workforce warning notice of 60 days for layoffs due to any reason, temporary or permanent, and including business closure. So if Hatteras' employee count meets that threshold everyone will know if they file. It's public record. There is no current filing in effect in North Carolina.

According to linkedin updated 2 weeks ago Hatteras' company size is listed as 201-500 employees with 125 employees currently listed as following the linkedin site. Now I doubt they are anywhere near 500 but 125 or so doesn't seem unrealistic.

D&B public access website shows data for back in 2018 as Hatteras having 71 employees and $38.9 million in sales. Those numbers are shockingly low to me. (I would have guessed about 50% higher for both). However they have introduced new models since then - both Hatteras and Cabo, so the current linkedin employee count of 125 could be in the ballpark.

Bottom line, if they're over 100 employees there would be more than rumors. There would be a public record.

First, let me make it clear I do not believe Hatteras will close. I do believe it will be sold relatively soon. They aren't in trouble, but Versa has a ton of issues.

Second, note that the post that incited this nonsense is now gone from Sam's.

Now to your post on WARN. First, the D&B numbers are far closer than linkedin. Also all the persons at Hatteras may not be Hatteras employees. Still there are so many ways companies circumvent WARN. If a company is negotiating for funds and afraid disclosing a cut back would jeopardize them they can withhold doing so. Companies can claim sudden events like the loss of a major contract. In 2020, there is no company that couldn't get by without giving adequate notice.

Sorry, don't use WARN notices or lack thereof as Gospel. People who run companies into the ground seldom are good at following rules and often don't care. I had a friend who was a VP of HR fired because he objected to not giving notice and objected to not delivering on promised severance. They told him to sue them, but then of course they were judgement proof and in Bankruptcy before that was possible. WARN is a good law and many companies follow it's rules and intent, but others don't.

Hatteras could face another lockdown.

People have. They see boats in the water and boats in the yard and cars in the parking lot and the appearance of boats being built.

I don't believe Hatteras is going to close either.

I had a client close one of their plants without a WARN notice they just paid the employees 60 days severance and said don't come back to work tomorrow. This was due to a multitude of problems at that plant and they moved production across their other plants in other states.

I don't think Versa has any intention of running Hatteras into the ground. I think it's value is in a sale as a going concern. I used the 60 day WARN notice as an example specifically to refute the rumor that they were closing at the end of the year which is 30 days away.

When I read that thread on the other site my first reaction was they should take this down. I'm glad to hear they did.

Note also you can have a "temporary layoff" of up to one day short of six months without it being covered by WARN. A lot of those layoffs then become permanent. The penalty for failure to comply with WARN is a civil penalty. Not very punitive if a company is out of business.

Have we learned nothing these past 5 years or so? Facts and truth don't matter. Our politics and stock market are run on rumor. That's all that matters. The tail wags the dog. Tortoise made a brilliant post. He said nothing, but generated 3 pages of discussion here and who knows how much on other forums. Does he represent a disgruntled employee, an investor or a competitor? Dk but it really doesn't matter. Anybody think there's a Hatteras owner or potential buyer who's not weighing the possible ramifications. The damage is done and Hatteras is now in trouble. Hatteras now needs to make a major announcement, i.e. take on a major new investor, find a buyer for the company, etc. Are boat buyers going to shell out millions of dollars on a boat that could have no company support in a few years?

Not sure what is brilliant about a post so cryptic it took a while to figure out what the OP was referring to. Especially when the source of the post turns out to be just an unfounded rumor from another forum...

He generated the buzz he desired, damaging the Hatteras brand, while maintaining plausible deniability. I thought you especially would appreciate that.

Whatever.

So the fact I know people who have been to the factory and who I trust implicitly and who told me exactly what they say, people going there to check on boats being built including one who is headed back there within this week to pick up the finished boat he checked on a few weeks ago and one who drove some propellers there recently and including a supplier who was in the plant early last week. This is nothing like an anonymous source told you they heard rumors. As to you, your source is a now removed post from SAM's and you don't even have the literacy to explain in your first post here what you're talking about. You're nothing but a rabble rouser with absolutely zero credibility. Unfounded rumors have no place here or on any other public forum.

I will toss one other opinion in your direction. The employees at Hatteras would have no idea if they were about to be closed or sold. Only two people on site know their true financial situation, both recently placed there by Versa. Others may have seen strange people wondering around but nothing more. All the employees know is they're operating as normal. Otherwise they just know what they've been told. They believe Hatteras is debt free. Untrue. They've been told there are new models designed and ready to build and Versa won't fund the builds. Sounds logical, but no way to confirm.

History is also a bit of a marker. Versa hasn't ever just shut down something they owned, or not in the years I've followed them. They will recapitalize, sell in bits and pieces, spin off, do anything else. The idea of Hatteras being shut down permanently is so preposterous. A temporary shutdown due to the pandemic is always possible and feared. Oh, and during their 67 day shut down there were many rumors they wouldn't reopen, all due to their lack of open communication with employees.

The new CEO of Hatteras is a Versa board member. His most recent assignment for Versa, prior to the Hatteras position, was to sell Polartec, which Versa owned, to Milliken in 2019. He's not a boat guy and he's not had a history of running companies as formerly was a McKinsey consultant. They also placed a new CFO in Hatteras with him. Versa appears to be on a course to sell some entities that will bring in money, not to dump companies like an airline that have no market value. But then none of that is a surprise. Versa's business is buying and selling. 2020 is the first year in quite a while with no transactions for them.

Isn’t part of the concern here that they their MY range is going to hurt given the IMO Tier III regulations with no good solution for this size range? Not sure if their 90 falls under the size requirement but that will also mean they will take a hit in the market segment.

More so, curious what impact this will have on OA given the majority of their yachts are above the 24m requirement.

Solutions are closer than they may appear in your mirror. lol

Hatteras' already has their 2021 deliveries and early 2022 deliveries in construction. While I have no proof, I do believe there will be an extension of time for adherence. Easy enough to blame the delay on the pandemic. I also know that all engine builders are quite far along toward solutions. They all have solutions for part of their product lines ready and are working on the rest.

It is a worrisome time for some builders dealing with the uncertainty. Also could be the source for rumors as one hears we're shutting down the 105 and 98 and thinks the company is shutting down or hears they can't build certain models and thinks it's all. The 100'+ group is worried, but it's not going to disappear. Most of the work on solutions is being done in Europe and the builders expressing the more worry the most are a couple of US builders.