Micropolis Reports a Loss of $14.7 Million

Losses continued to mount last quarter for Micropolis Corp., a Chatsworth company that makes computer disk drives.

The company reported a $14.7-million loss for the second quarter ended July 1, almost six times larger than the $2.52-million loss the company reported for the same quarter a year ago.

Sales in the latest quarter were $75.8 million, down 30% from sales of $108 million for the same three-month period in 1993.

For its six-month period, Micropolis had a loss of $24.5 million on sales of $159 million, compared to a loss of $1.06 million on sales of $202 million in the same period a year earlier.

The company, a relatively small player in the disk-drive industry, has been battered by price wars that favor larger producers such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard Corp. The company attributed the recent losses to price erosion and a decrease in shipments of its drives.

The company also said it expects to report a loss in the third quarter of 1994, the size of which will depend partly on the success of new products, including video and audio disk systems.