Silicon Valley Executive to Become Archive President

In a reshuffling aimed at bolstering its sagging earnings, Archive Corp.’s founder has resigned from the presidency of the Costa Mesa data-storage systems company.

D. Howard Lewis said in a prepared statement that he will become chairman and chief executive of the company he started in 1980 and that J. Peter Wilson, a Silicon Valley computer executive, will become Archive’s new president.

Lewis, 49, attributed the move to a need for additional management expertise to handle the company’s rapid growth. Archive has had an increase in revenues but a decline in net income for the last two quarters.

“The company has grown to a size where we’ve restructured the top level of management a bit to handle the growth,” said Joseph Martin, vice president of finance. Revenues for the current quarter are expected to increase to about $18 million, according to Martin. He said Wilson would concentrate on running the company on a day-to-day basis, while Lewis would spend more time on strategic planning and investor relations.

Archive’s net income for the third quarter of fiscal 1985, ended June 28, was $383,000, a 40% decline from the $636,000 it reported in the same period a year earlier. Revenues for the quarter, however, increased 55% to $15.8 million from $10.2 million in the year-earlier period.

The decline in net income was blamed on costs associated with improvements in product design and opening an additional factory in Singapore. Martin said that with those expenses out of the way, Archive expects to show improved profits as well as continued growth in the next quarter.

Wilson, 50, has also been named chief operating officer and nominated to Archive’s board of directors. He had been president and chief executive officer of Ferix Corp., a computer printer company, for about two years, Martin said. Before that, Wilson worked for Minneapolis-based Control Data Corp. for 12 years in senior operations positions.