Printrak Hopes to Follow O.C. Trend With Stock Offer

Printrak International Inc. is the latest Orange County company to step up to what has been a receptive market for stock offerings.

The maker of automated fingerprint identification systems filed Friday for regulatory permission to sell stock to the public for the first time.

The Anaheim-based company, formerly a division of Rockwell International Corp., plans to sell 2 million shares of common stock. An additional 500,000 will be sold by existing stockholders, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The 2.5 million shares combined account for about 26% of the company’s outstanding common stock.

Printrak said it plans to sell the stock for between $9 and $11 per share, raising up to $22 million for repayment of debt, capital expenditures and possible acquisitions.

Chief Executive Richard M. Giles plans to sell 190,000 shares in the offering, and Charles L. Smith, the company’s chief operating officer, is expected to sell 200,000 shares. That means both senior executives could each pocket more than $2 million.

Printrak reported a profit of $1.84 million on sales of $45.7 million for the year that ended March 31, 1996, compared with year-earlier net income of $1.03 million on sales of $26.8 million.

But Printrak mentioned a number of significant risk factors in its SEC application, including the fact that it relies on a small number of large orders from government agencies. In fiscal 1996, for instance, 18% of its revenue came from a single contract with Louisiana, according to company documents.

Dependence on such large but infrequent contracts makes Printrak vulnerable to periodic lulls, and helps explain why it recorded losses in four of the eight quarters in fiscal 1995 and 1996.

Printrak began as a division of Seal Beach-based Rockwell in the mid-1970s but was sold to Thomas de la Rue & Co. Ltd. in 1981, company officials said. It was sold again a decade later, this time to the company’s management team.