Newport Pharmaceuticals Continues Its Turnaround
Capping a nine-month financial turnaround, Newport Pharmaceuticals International Inc. reported net income of $100,976 for the third quarter of its 1985 fiscal year, rebounding from a $600,000 loss in the same quarter the year before, the Newport Beach drug research and marketing concern said Monday.
Newport Pharmaceuticals’ revenues for the period ended Jan. 31 rose 26%, to $2.65 million from $2.1 million.
A company spokesman pointed to increased overseas sales of the company’s primary product, the drug Isoprinosine, for the return to profitability. Isoprinosine is used in the treatment of viral infections in patients with deficient immune systems. It is marketed in 84 countries, but the Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved its sale in the United States.
For the first three quarters of fiscal 1985, Newport Pharmaceuticals said it earned $568,000, in contrast to its loss of $1.5 million in the same period of fiscal 1984. Revenues were up 26%, to $7.7 million from $6.1 million.
Newport Pharmaceuticals is testing Isoprinosine on persons believed susceptible to contracting AIDS. The company said it intends to submit results of the tests, at 12 U.S. and European medical centers, including the UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange, to the FDA in hopes of getting the drug approved for treating so-called pre-AIDS patients in the United States.
Company spokeswoman Luana M. Kruse said it is hoped that the drug will “enhance the immune system” of individuals who are prone to developing the often-fatal acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
Pacific Inland Bancorp Posts Profit of $115,000
Pacific Inland Bancorp said Monday that earnings from its investment management subsidiary offset operating losses for Pacific Inland Bank to produce a $115,000 profit for the second half of calendar 1984.
The Anaheim holding company reported a $148,076 loss a year earlier. However, the young company had no operating divisions at the time.
The diversified financial services company does not break down earnings for its separate divisions, but it said a $47,500 tax benefit from previous years’ operating losses combined with operating profits from Trident Investment Management of New Jersey to erase operating losses for its other principal subsidiary, Pacific Inland Bank, which began operation in March, 1984.
The investment management company, purchased last year by Pacific Inland Bancorp, manages more than $750 million in corporate and government pension funds nationally and reported $1.4 million in revenue for the second half, the company said.
As for the bank, Richard J. Meyer, Pacific Inland Bancorp chairman, said in a statement that it “is steadily making the transition to profitability.”
Pacific Inland Bancorp’s combined assets totaled $32.3 million on Dec. 31, including $29.8 million in assets held by Pacific Inland Bank.
In the nine months between its opening in March and the end of December, the bank’s loan portfolio grew to $17.6 million and total deposits rose to $19 million.
Pacific Inland Bancorp completed its initial public stock offering in April, 1984, and has changed its fiscal year-end from June 30 to Dec. 31, resulting in the six-month reporting period between fiscal 1984, which ended last June 30 and fiscal 1985, which began Jan. 1.
General Automation Inc. Reports Loss for Quarter
Blaming the persistent sales slump in the nation’s computer industry, General Automation Inc. of Anaheim reported a loss of $974,000 for the fiscal second quarter on lower revenues.
For the three months ended Jan. 26, Orange County’s largest publicly traded computer company posted sales of $13.5 million, 30% below the $19.3 million recorded in the year-earlier period. The quarter’s loss of $974,000 contrasted with a $196,000 profit a year earlier.
General Automation’s losses would have been steeper had the company not included a $1.2-million gain from the sale of its power supply division, National Power Technology, in the quarterly results.
Leonard Mackenzie, General Automation’s chairman, blamed the results on poor sales in the company’s computer parts division, primarily the printed circuit board operation, and lower-than-expected sales in the computer division.
However, General Automation is by no means alone in suffering a sales decline. Throughout the industry, manufacturers are complaining that orders for both computers and parts have declined from the torrid pace of the first half of 1984.
For the first six months of its 1985 fiscal year, General Automation said it lost $2.2 million, in contrast to a profit of $505,000 in the year-earlier period. First-half revenues fell 18% to $30 million from $36.5 million.
In recent years, losses have been more the rule than the exception for General Automation. The company, once the nation’s fourth-largest mini-computer maker, has been plagued by a variety of internal problems that almost forced it to file for liquidation.
For example, in addition to the current soft market for computers and their parts, the company is battling a spate of production errors at a printed circuit board manufacturing plant that caused it to scrap a substantial number of the expensive products in the 1984 fiscal year.
New quality assurance procedures and the installation of new test equipment in the circuit board operation slowed production of the boards in the first six months of the current fiscal year, however, and contributed to the company’s latest losses.
Although Mackenzie said the company expects sales of circuit boards to pick up from their slack level of the first half of the year, he said sales of computers are expected to remain flat through at least the company’s current quarter.
