Office Depot: Fall From Grace

01 March 2008

It's been tough for Office Depot of late. And with all its divisions under fire for one reason or another, CEO Steve Odland is battling to keep the company on an even keel. It never rains, but it pours. And for Office Depot, it has been nothing short of torrential over the past year or so. A quick glance at Depot's share price is enough to set alarm bells ringing: $38.09 on the first day of trading in 2007, compared to a 52-week low of $11.54 in mid-January this year, and a slightly recovered $13.98 at the time of going to press. At its worst, that's a share price drop of almost 70 percent in just a year. The last time Depot's stock moved in that region was in 2003 - the year of the infamous Guilbert acquisition in Europe....