Beckman Posts 16% Rise in Profits : Finances: Meeting with investment group on the same day annual results are released is called coincidental.

Beckman Instruments Inc. announced a 16% annual earnings increase Wednesday, the same day that company officials met with an investment group led by Texas millionaire Lee Bass to discuss corporate changes to further improve profits.

The timing of the two events was coincidental, a company spokesman said, and not meant to pacify representatives of the Fort Worth-based Bass Group, which owns a 5.3% stake in the medical instruments manufacturer.

Nevertheless, the company said its higher earnings were proof that the company was doing well financially and that the results are good news for both company officials and shareholders.

“We of course are quite pleased that at a time when many of our competitors are having difficulties, we have put together a business plan that is rewarding employees and shareholders,” said Jay Steffenhagen, Beckman’s director of investor relations.

Steffenhagen said that company officials met with Bass Group representatives for an hour Wednesday morning. The company did not, however, release details of that meeting.

“It was an informal, constructive get-together,” Steffenhagen said. “It was just a discussion.”

Bass Group officials were not available for comment.

For the year ended Dec. 31, the company posted net income of $43.8 million, or $1.53 a share, a 16% increase from the previous year’s profit of $38.1 million, or $1.32 a share.

Sales for the year were $908.8 million, up 6% from 1991 sales of $857.9 million.

Fourth-quarter earnings rose 19% to $12.4 million, or 44 cents a share, from $10.4 million, or 37 cents a share, in the previous year. Quarterly revenue was $250.2 million, up 7% from $233.7 million.

Bass Group had announced in December that it wanted a meeting Wednesday to discuss a greater shareholder voice in the company. It said at the time, in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, that it wanted a more independent board and to propose “a number of ideas about how financial and operating performance could be improved.”

The company has already announced several corporate changes in the face of Wednesday’s meeting, which some analysts had said may have been a harbinger of a Bass takeover.

Last week, Beckman said it would recruit four directors who are not company employees and seek the advice of “interested stockholders,” including Bass Group. Those directors would have no previous ties to Beckman.

The company also said it would add six non-management directors to the current eight-member board of directors, creating a new 14-member board, and would study ways to “enhance stockholder communication” with management.

News of the pending changes at Beckman drew praise from the 65,000-member United Shareholders Assn., a Washington lobbying group.

Beckman Instruments stock closed at $24 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, down 75 cents a share from the previous day’s close.