Public company moves headquarters to Minnesota

Minnesota picked up a public company late last year when Vista Outdoor Inc. moved its headquarters from Farmington, Utah to Anoka.

The maker of outdoors consumer products and shooting sports products moved its headquarters into the distribution center of Federal Ammunition, its largest subsidiary. The new headquarters is approximately three miles from manufacturing facility of Federal Ammunition, also in Anoka.

Federal employs approximately 1,400 in Anoka between the distribution center and manufacturing facility and the corporate center now includes 120 employees.

Had it been included in our list of largest public companies in Minnesota this year, Vista would have ranked 22^nd . It is larger by revenue than Winnebago Industries, and Deluxe Corp., and would fall just below nVent Electric PLC.

The company officially moved in November and subleased is previous office space in Utah. The move was part of a strategic transformation that included cutting company costs.

In Vista's last fiscal year, the strategic transformation helped to cut $44 million from its SG&A expenses and the company says much of that was from closing its underutilized corporate office in Utah.

Vista Outdoor's CEO is Christopher Metz who was CEO of Minnesota-based Arctic Cat Inc. before the maker of snowmobiles and ATVs was acquired by Textron Inc. of Providence, R.I. in March of 2017. In October of 2017 Metz was hired by Vista as its CEO.

His initial compensation package at Vista included a $500,000 signing bonus but also $110,000 in commuting expenses for Metz's travel between his home in Florida and Utah. Company officials says Metz lives in Florida with his family but that he spends most of his time on the road between the Anoka headquarters and the headquarters of its various brands which include Bell, Blackburn, Bushnell, Federal, and Giro,

Vista operates in two business segments Outdoor Products including outdoor cooking equipment, binoculars, scopes and rangefinders, bicycle helmets, and gun cleaning supplies; and Shooting Sports products including Federal and other ammunition brands, Savage firearms and others.

For the most recent fiscal year ended March 31, 2019 the company had $2.1 billion in revenue, down 11% from the previous year due partially to the sale of its eyewear business. Ammunition was the biggest segment accounting for $883.1 million in sales or 43% of overall revenue.