Company Posts Loss for Year : Whittaker to Sell Medical Holding

Continuing its transformation into a chemicals and technology concern, Whittaker Corp. on Monday agreed to sell the last remaining unit of its once-sizable life sciences division for an undisclosed price to New York investor Richard Bernstein.

Whittaker also posted a yearly loss for the first time in at least a decade.

The sale of Whittaker’s General Medical Corp. a supplier of medical, surgical and laboratory products that last year had revenues of $380 million, is part of a widely publicized restructuring under which Whittaker Chairman Joseph F. Alibrandi has attempted to slim down a conglomerate that had grown paunchy after pursuing a diversification strategy in the 1960s.

Whittaker announced last August that it would sell its life science, metals, marine and hydraulic material handling units in order to focus on its most promising divisions, technology and chemicals. Alibrandi on Monday pointed to Whittaker’s modest gain in the fourth quarter as confirmation that the plan is starting to produce positive results.

For the three months ended Oct. 31, Whittaker reported earnings of $513,000 on sales of $109.5 million. A year earlier, it reported a quarterly loss of $3 million on sales of $90.4 million.

However, the company posted a deficit for the year, losing $4.9 million on sales of $399.1 million, compared to earnings of $19.9 million on sales of $308.6 million in 1985.

Accounting Procedure

Alibrandi said the deficit stemmed from the company’s decision to include a $9.3-million loss from discontinued operations, primarily start-up costs for the health maintenance organization that Whittaker sold to Travelers Corp. in fiscal 1986. But the gain from the sale of the HMO was included in fiscal 1985 results. If both items had been included in 1986 financial statements, he said, the company would not have reported a loss this year.

But even as Alibrandi was unloading divisions that accounted for nearly three-fourths of his company’s business, he spoke of looking for new acquisitions in technology and chemicals, despite the fact that Whittaker has been on a spending spree recently in an effort to buy back as many as 6 million shares of company stock--nearly half the company.

“We are constantly looking for new acquisitions in chemicals and technology,” said Alibrandi. “We are not really constrained” by the stock purchases.

Analysts generally consider the restructuring a long overdue move. However, in the past some have expressed concern about Alibrandi’s roving corporate eye.

Steve Reid, an analyst with the Wedbush, Nobel, Cooke securities firm in Los Angeles, said that concern remains. “They’ve told us where they are going: They’ve said they are going into the chemical business. . . . Knowing what Joe (Alibrandi) has done in the past, he will probably be on an acquisition trail to redeploy assets.”