Morehouse Reports Loss, Talks With Possible Suitors

Morehouse Industries, a Fullerton manufacturer of industrial pigment mixing equipment used by makers of paint, cosmetics and magnetic audio and visual tapes, lost $582,300 for its fiscal year ended Aug. 31, compared to a loss of $280,000 in fiscal 1987.

It reported fiscal 1988 revenues of $3.88 million, down from $3.9 million.

In an interview Wednesday, Dale H. Morehouse, chairman, president and chief executive of the publicly held company, said he is looking at all alternatives for appeasing disappointed shareholders, including the possibility of selling the company.

Currently Morehouse said he is negotiating with four possible suitors whom he would not identify. He said so far none has made a formal acquisition offer.

He said the company’s financial results were depressed by the cost of developing new machinery that will soon be introduced to the market.

“Fiscal 1988 was a year of rebuilding, updating, exploring and developing. Consequently, the results of operations did not meet previous expectations,” Morehouse said in a prepared statement.

Morehouse, whose great-grandfather founded Morehouse Industries in 1898 and whose family still owns a substantial amount of the company’s stock, said he would prefer to avoid selling the company by expanding its business and making it profitable.

He said one of the company’s brightest prospects is a line of solvent recovery systems designed for use by manufacturers of such products as paints, inks, wood finishes and explosives.