A. Malachi Mixon III, chairman and chief executive of Invacare Corp. (NYSE: IVC), has suffered a mild stroke and is taking a medical leave to recover, the company said early Friday.
Gerald B. Blouch, president and chief operating officer for the Elyria, Ohio, company that makes home health care equipment and supplies, will take over as interim CEO until Mixon returns. James C. Boland, Invacare’s lead director and a member of its board since 1998, will be interim chairman.
“I have suffered a mild stroke, but fortunately, my condition is stable, and my doctors have told me the prognosis for a full recovery is favorable,” Mixon, 69, said in a written statement. “I look forward to returning to Invacare soon to full duty. In the interim, I am pleased to have Gerry Blouch and Jim Boland assume responsibility for my day-to-day activities as CEO and chairman of Invacare.”
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Mixon’s medical leave triggered a succession plan that has been in place for some time. “We have every confidence that Invacare’s outstanding tenured management team will continue operations seamlessly,” Boland said in the statement.
Commenting from his hospital bed is typical behavior for Mixon, a straight-talking entrepreneur who grew up in Oklahoma and used all of his savings — $10,000 — to buy Invacare from Johnson & Johnson’s Technicare unit in 1979. He and a group of investors paid $7.8 million for the sleepy Elyria company that made wheelchairs. Mixon, w ho had been marketing vice president for Technicare, took over as CEO.
Mixon woke up the company, taking it public in 1984 at $11 a share and leading it through two decades of growth until U.S. government reimbursement pressures and low-cost Asian manufacturing forced a regrouping in the mid-2000s.
Invacare turned another financial corner about two years ago, recapturing its position as an industry low-cost producer by sourcing many of its parts and products in low-cost countries, making its 0wn products at two Chinese factories, and streamlining the way it makes products.
Last week, Invacare announced a strong first quarter of profit growth, but a weak quarter for sales growth. At the time, Mixon said his company is by no means done with cutting costs, but it also had “a lot of initiatives on the way to get our sales cranked up again.”
