Beckman’s Earnings up 8% for 1st Quarter : Medical-Device Firm Reports $10.7 Million

Beckman Instruments Inc., a Fullerton-based maker of medical instruments, on Monday reported earnings of $10.7 million for the first quarter of 1989, an 8% increase from $9.9 million a year earlier.

Revenue for the period increased 7% to $199 million, from $186.2 million.

President Lou Rosso said in a prepared statement that the 1989 results contrast with an exceptionally strong 1988 first quarter, which included large, one-time orders that were part of a Japanese program to balance trade.

Beckman became a public company in November when its parent, SmithKline Beckman Corp., spun off 14%, or 4.5 million shares, of Beckman stock in a public offering. Philadelphia-based SmithKline plans to distribute the rest of the subsidiary’s shares to SmithKline stockholders this summer before the parent company merges most of its operations with the British company Beecham PLC.

SmithKline reported Monday that its Orange County-based Allergan Inc. subsidiary had pretax earnings of $23.7 million, up 20% from $19.7 million in the year-earlier period. The year-earlier figure included a $3.7-million expense for the recall of a contact lens disinfecting product.

Revenue for Allergan, an Irvine maker of eye-care and skin-care products, increased 8% to $178.6 million, from $165.1 million. Allergan, which is now entirely owned by SmithKline, also will be spun off to SmithKline shareholders this summer.

Meanwhile, Beckman said it named Carolyne K. Davis to its board of directors. Davis, a SmithKline director, fills a newly created position on Beckman’s board, increasing the board to nine members, including four who are either directors or officers of SmithKline.

Davis has served on SmithKline’s board since 1985 but is not among those to be on the board of the merged SmithKline-Beecham operation.

Davis, 56, is a health care adviser for the accounting firm Ernst & Whinney in Washington, and from 1981-85 she worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration.

She is also a director of Beverly Enterprises and this month was named to the board of Prudential Insurance Co. of America.