Remington Arms Company has been sold!

[denton]

This is actually probably very good news for us, and for Remington.

Cerberus buys companies that are in financial difficulty, and brings in fresh capital, and a management turn-around team. At the moment, they own about 70 such companies, including Bushmaster, which they bought last December.

They will get Remington into a position where it is producing at a profit, and then they will either keep it as a producing investment, or they will sell it for more than they paid for it. In either case, Remington's long-term viability is much better than it used to be.

It is not unreasonable for us to expect that quality will improve. Prices may or may not go up.

Some industries "get" the quality thing. Those that do have very low defect rates, and have year over year price reductions. Look how much better cars are now than they were 30 years ago, and how much less we pay for them in constant dollars. The auto industry "gets it". In the firearms industry, quality is relatively poor, and prices go up every year. Clearly, the firearms industry doesn't "get it", though Savage seems to be doing better than the others. When the whole industry is down to 50 defective parts per million, and it is rare to buy a firearm that isn't flawless, and when prices hold steady or go down slightly each year, we'll know that the firearms industry finally gets it. Cerberus is likely to move Remington in that direction, and to put pressure on other companies to do the same.