[imglorp]

This is what's wrong with investing overall: 1Q future blindness.

We'd have almost nothing if it weren't for university partnerships and corporate R&D way back when. There's no way to accomplish this now except to stay private.

[themafia]

Well, they took most of that money, and then just bought back their own stock. It's something more than just 1Q blindness and failure to understand the importance of research.

https://media.irobot.com/2016-02-04-iRobot-Announces-Sale-of...

[JackFr]

A company who does cutting edge R&D for defense contracts and and consumer small appliances is destined for trouble. They are two very different lines of business. While you might make an argument about synergy, the problem stems from the investors who are investing in two very different lines of business. Ultimately one of them was going to win. The failure to realize that offshoring would turn suppliers into competitors is a known issue in the consumer small appliance world and it looks like they were not ready.

Interestingly enough the R&D portion that was sold off, became Endeavor Robotics which was sold to Teledyne FLIR Systems and seems to be doing fine.

[gruez]

>There's no way to accomplish this now except to stay private.

cue all the lamentations about how evil private equity is.