Special Devices Plans Sale of Stock : Securities: The Newhall maker of air-bag systems and aerospace supplies hopes to raise up to $18 million to pay off debts.
Special Devices Inc., a Newhall manufacturer of devices that help ignite missile engines and automotive air-bag systems, hopes to raise up to $18 million with an initial public stock offering of 1.5 million common shares.
An additional 480,000 shares are being offered by existing Special Devices stockholders, including the company’s chairman, Thomas F. Treinen, and a director, Walter Neubauer.
In the company’s stock-registration filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Treinen and Neubauer said they each plan to sell 55,000 shares. The offering, managed by PaineWebber Inc., is expected to take in between $10 and $12 a share, which would bring the executives up to $660,000 each.
But Treinen, 53, and Neubauer, 58, would continue to control Special Devices because each would still own 29.3% of the company’s 5.7 million common shares that would be outstanding after the offering, the filing stated.
Another executive, Jack B. Watson, head of Special Devices’ automotive products division, plans to offer 330,000 shares, which would reduce his holdings in the company to 4.9%.
The public would own about 35% after the offering.
The company, which has 243 employees, plans to use proceeds from the offering for working capital and to pay off debts.
For 30 years, the firm’s main business has been providing equipment that ignites rocket motors in U. S. military missile systems, including the Patriot and Tomahawk missiles, both used during the Gulf War. In the past two years, however, the company has begun making “initiators,” which fire the air bags that are increasingly being placed in vehicles to prevent injuries.
After earning $2.1 million on sales of $20.3 million in its fiscal year that ended Oct. 31, 1989, Special Devices suffered a down year in fiscal 1990, when it lost $294,000 on sales of $14 million. The company blamed the slide partly on problems with component suppliers who delayed shipments of Special Devices’ aerospace products.
However, the company bounced back this year--earning $589,000 on sales of $11.9 million in the six months that ended April 28--after overcoming its aerospace problems and moving into the air-bag market, the SEC filing stated.
