Archive Corp. Reports 39% Rise in Profits for First Quarter

Archive Corp., a Costa Mesa manufacturer of tape drives for computers, said it earned $3.2 million for the first quarter ended Dec. 30, a 39% increase over last year’s profits of $2.3 million.

Sales rose 36% during the quarter, to $36 million from $26.5 million last year.

The company said it had finished buying back 1 million shares of stock during the quarter because it believes that the tape drive market will grow faster than the overall computer market.

Tape drives convert information stored on computer tapes to signals a computer can use.

Archive said it had also cut costs during the quarter to improve its gross margin, a measure of efficiency obtained by subtracting the cost of the products from sales revenues.

The company also began selling products for the Apple Computer Macintosh market for the first time during the quarter.

Archive announced earlier this week that it had signed a multi-million-dollar agreement with H. Ross Perot, who will invest in the development of new products at the company.

Archive said the prospects for the remaining three quarters of its fiscal year are “excellent.”