ICN Loses $5.5 Million in Third Quarter : Financial: The Costa Mesa firm says a 47% sales increase failed to boost bottom-line results.

Blaming foreign currency losses and poor-performing investments, ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. on Friday reported a third-quarter loss of $5.5 million despite a 47% increase in sales from the year-earlier period.

The pharmaceutical company’s loss for the quarter ended Aug. 31 compares to a loss of $2.1 million a year earlier.

ICN’s quarterly sales soared to $62.6 million, up 47% from $42.6 million.

ICN said the third-quarter results were depressed by several non-cash items totaling $9.1 million, including a $4.5-million increase in the company’s overseas debt resulting from a weaker U.S. dollar, said Jack Sholl, a company spokesman. “A lot of our publicly outstanding debt is in Swiss francs and Dutch guilders,” he said.

Another major factor, Sholl said, was a $1.5-million decline in the value of the company’s investment portfolio.

The Costa Mesa firm said that ICN Biomedicals, its 80%-owned biotechnology research and medical diagnostics subsidiary, and SPI Pharmaceuticals, its 89%-owned pharmaceutical marketing subsidiary, registered record third-quarter sales. The company attributed the sales increase at ICN Biomedicals partly to its November, 1989, acquisition of Flow Laboratories, a manufacturer of products for biotechnology research.

Ken Bohringer, an analyst with Prudential-Bache Research in New York, said the third-quarter loss was higher than he expected, although he saw some reasons for encouragement.

“Operationally, they (ICN) are doing much better,” he said. “They are getting their expenses under control and have dramatically reduced their research and development spending.” But he added that ICN is still suffering from large interest payments on its borrowings.

“This company has disappointed repeatedly,” he said, “and I think investors are waiting for convincing signs of an upturn.”

ICN stock closed Friday at $2.75 per share, down 12.5 cents in New York Stock Exchange trading.

For the first nine months of the year, ICN has lost $13.5 million on sales of $196.5 million, contrasted with earnings of $3.8 million and sales of $129.6 million for the year-earlier period.