Teradata didn’t respond to offers to discuss staying in Ohio

Teradata’s decision to move its headquarters from Miami Twp. to San Diego puts nearly 300 local jobs at risk and costs the region one of its few publicly traded companies.

Teradata officials announced Wednesday “closing its Dayton office and locating its headquarters in San Diego better positions Teradata for the long-term,” according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The move would “make its decision-making, systems and processes more efficient.”

In a notice sent to the state of Ohio, Teradata said the move will impact 267 of the 306 employees working at the company’s Miami Twp. offices — and it will be permanent.

“Teradata is offering 39 employees currently working at the Dayton facility the opportunity to continue working in this area; their salary and benefits will not change due to this action,” Teradata said in the letter to the state. “After the Dayton facility is closed they will be exclusively virtual and will not be working from this location.”

Teradata will offer 202 Dayton-area employees a chance to move to other company locations in the U.S., the company said. “These employees have an opportunity to review and decide whether to accept Teradata’s relocation offer,” the letter said.

In a statement, a company spokeswoman said San Diego “has been core to Teradata for over 20 years, and the majority of its operations have been there since the 1990s. As the company continues to grow, officially transitioning to San Diego will allow Teradata to operate with more speed and agility to better serve its customers.”

Teradata, an international data analytics firm, began as a California company before being purchased by Dayton-based NCR, then it was spun off again in 2007 just before NCR left the region and moved its headquarters to Atlanta.

“This was a decision that we did not take lightly — we recognize the impact it can have on the surrounding community,” the company statement said. “Over the coming months, we will be working closely with all affected employees and other important stakeholders to ensure a smooth transition as we continue to serve our customers.”

“What I can say is that the majority of our Dayton-based employees will have the opportunity to relocate,” said a Teradata spokeswoman, Jennifer Donahue,. “Of that group, we anticipate there will be individuals who decide to leave the company or retire. We can’t speculate on what those numbers will be.”

The company declined to make Victor Lund, Teradata chief executive, or any other Teradata executive, available to interview Wednesday.

No negotiations

The company’s decision came after local and state officials had sought unsuccessfully a dialog with the firm’s leaders in hopes of keeping them in the region.

Jon Keeling, press secretary for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, said in a statement that the state’s private development arm, JobsOhio, “repeatedly offered to discuss incentives and other issues with the company over the past year.”

“The company declined,” Keeling said.

Jeff Hoagland, president and CEO of the Dayton Development Coalition - local business leaders who seek to attract and grow businesses in the region - said Teradata officials did not seek incentives to stay.

“We understand this was a business decision for Teradata,” Hoagland said. “Even though we’ve had multiple conversations with the company, they gave no indication they would leave, nor did they ask for our help. Many of Teradata’s senior management has ties to the West coast, as well.”

In a release, State Rep. Niraj Antani, R-Miami Twp., said he has written to Kasich and John Minor, CEO of JobsOhio, “to urge them to also contact Victor Lund to see what they can do to keep Teradata in Miami Township.”

“On Feb. 12, I had convened a meeting with JobsOhio staff and their local regional partners to specifically discuss what we can do regarding local concerns about Teradata relocating. I will continue to do whatever I can to keep Teradata in Miami Township,” Antani added.

Doug Barry, a Miami Twp. trustee, said he had heard rumblings Teradata officials wanted to leave Dayton, but he said the company had not contacted the township directly about its plans.

“We have tried to contact Teradata over the last couple of years,” Barry said. He said the company has not responded to those overtures, particularly after local-resident Bruce Langos, who was Teradata Chief Operating Officer for 10 years, left the company in early 2016.

Langos, who now works for the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, said Wednesday the news of the massive job loss was disheartening.

“I know so many people there that I’ve been affiliated with over roughly the last 10 years,” Langos said. “I feel a disappointment when I hear that.”

Hope that impact will be manageable

After the announcement, local leaders said the impact from the job loss regionally should be less than when previous iconic employers like NCR, Mead and Delphi closed or moved.

“Dayton, and all of Ohio, are far more resilient than in previous years and those workers not remaining with the company enter a healthy job market in which their skills are in demand,” Keeling said. “Ohio is committed to helping them and the community moving forward and, despite this unwelcome news, the region’s future remains very encouraging.”

Hoagland said “Whenever a company has facilities in the Dayton region and other locations, we know there is a risk for consolidations,” Hoagland said in a statement from the coalition. “That’s why the (coalition) and its state and local economic development partners consistently reach out to companies, including Teradata, to learn about their needs and provide support.”

Langos said one positive outcome of the move is there is an opportunity for the “very talented” people who work at Teradata to work at any company in the Dayton area seeking data expertise.

“I would encourage those other companies to reach out and take advantage of that,” Langos said.

Nine years since NCR

The decision is a bleak echo of NCR Corp.’s own decision to leave the Dayton area almost a decade ago to move to the Atlanta area, where NCR’s headquarters remains.

Teradata was a 2007 spinoff of NCR.

But while NCR was drawn away to Georgia in part by more than $60 million in state and local incentives there, Teradata did not indicate it was receiving anything from the state of Ohio to relocate there. Langos said he did not believe Teradata was being “enticed” to leave Ohio via state incentives from California. “This is actually a real business decision that is being made on their own for the sake of the business,” Langos said of Teradata.

Teradata said in its SEC filing Wednesday that its move to San Diego will incur costs related to “one-time employee separation benefits, transition support, and other exit-related costs.

“As the specific actions in connection with the initiatives for this plan have not been finalized, the company is currently unable to make a good faith estimate of the total amount or range of amounts to be incurred in connection with the plan, nor provide an estimate of the amount or range of amounts of any future cash expenditures related to these actions,” Teradata said in the filing.

Last month, Teradata reported a net loss of about $7 million in the first quarter of 2018. In 2017 the company reported having a net income of $173 million from revenue of $2.2 billion; that was down from 2016 net revenue of $338 million. Teradata stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange; its stock rose 2.35 percent Wednesday to $42.63 a share.

Austin Landing’s first win

The move will mean the loss of an anchor tenant for the Austin Landing development in Miami Twp. The development was built in the late-2000s to attract jobs and companies to the region and take advantage of proximity to I-75 and job growth between Dayton and Cincinnati. Teradata’s headquarters was one of the project’s first and most visible office tenants when the company moved there in 2010 and occupied 60,000 square feet of office space.

“Change is inevitable,” Larry Dillin, president of VisCap Development, the asset manager for Austin Landing, said in a statement Wednesday. “While we hate to see a quality neighbor leave the property, the beauty of a well established mixed-use community like Austin Landing is that when change occurs, options for reuse can be implemented to add even greater value to the property.

“We are blessed with a strong list of office tenants and significant continued interest from others seeking the amenities offered at Austin Landing,” Dillin added.


Teradata Timeline

Teradata, which will move its Dayton-area headquarters functions to San Diego, has a history dating to the 1970s.

Teradata was founded as a database management system for parallel processing with multiple microprocessors in the late 1970s. The name symbolized the ability to manage terabytes (trillions of bytes) of data.

1979: Teradata incorporates in Bentwood, Calif.

1989: Teradata partners with NCR Corp. to build the "next generation of database computers."

1991: AT&T bought NCR in September, 1991; in December NCR bought Teradata.

1997: AT&T spun off NCR and, on Jan. 1, 1997, NCR became an independent, publicly traded company once again.

2007: NCR announced on Jan. 8 that it would spin off the division as a publicly traded company, with the split expected to become effective by late that summer. Teradata accounted for one-quarter of NCR's $6 billion in revenue the year before the split.

2010: Teradata moved to Austin Landing from its first headquarters along Miami Village Drive in Miami Twp.

June 6, 2018: Teradata announces its moving its headquarters to San Diego, Calif.

Source: Teradata

KNOW WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON

Our business reporter Tom Gnau was the first reporter to break the news about Teradata leaving the Dayton region. Follow him on Twitter at @ThomasGnau. Also, sign up for our daily business newsletter at MyDaytonDailyNews.com to stay in the know about the local economy and the impact on you.