Compiled by Mark Mueller
TOP STORIES
New Century Financial Corp. is laying off close to 2,000 workers, after the bankrupt subprime lender failed to receive any bids for its mortgage loan lending unit last week. Delaware’s bankruptcy court had set May 2 as the due date for bids for the shuttered unit, starting at minimum of $1 million. But no buyers stepped up to the plate. New Century will keep only about 750 employees going forward, as additional liquidation efforts are completed. The subprime lender still plans to sell its loan servicing unit for a minimum of $133 million.
Fullerton-based medical testing company Beckman Coulter Inc. has upped its offer for San Diego’s Biosite Inc. to about $1.67 billion, or $90 a share. The revised offer matches a rival bid from Massachusetts-based In-verness Medical Inno-vations Inc. Beckman’s revised offer is $5 a share more than its original offer in late March. The current bid is good through May 15. Separately, Beckman said its first-quarter profit was up 14% to $37.1 million on improved gross margins, beating Wall Street expectations. Sales were up 8% to $613.6 million. Analysts expected Beckman to earn $35.8 million, with sales of $617.8 million.
Irvine chipmaker Broadcom Corp. is paying $31 million in cash to buy Newton Centre, Mass.-based Octalica Inc., a privately held maker of chips for digital home entertainment devices. The deal is expected to close by June 30. Octalica makes networking chips that allow digital content to be distributed through cable in homes.
Aliso Viejo’s QLogic Corp., a maker of data storage and networking products, saw profit fall by about 42% for the quarter. Profit declined to $18.4 million from $31.4 million a year earlier. The company cited charges and costs from acquisitions and stock compensation. Excluding the expenses, QLogic posted a profit of about $35 million, slightly down from a year ago. Analysts expected about $36.6 million in profit for the quarter.
Shares of Santa Ana circuit board maker TTM Technologies Inc. surged last week after its first quarter earnings beat estimates. The company posted net income of $8.5 million, a 3% drop from a year earlier but well above Wall Street expectations. Analysts’ expected net income of about $6.3 million. Shares increased nearly 30% on the news. Sales grew 143% in the first quarter to $32.7 million, due in large part to operations of a Tyco International Ltd. unit that TTM bought in October for $226 million.
Irvine’s Allergan Inc. posted first-quarter profits of $43.8 million last week, a big turnaround from the $445 million loss it posted a year ago, following the Botox maker’s buy of Inamed Corp. Excluding one-time charges and gains, Allergan’s net income was $139.9 million last quarter. Wall Street expected Allergan to earn about $137 million, excluding charges. Revenue was up 42% to $872 million last quarter. Of that, $165 million in sales came from Inamed, which Allergan bought a year ago for $3.2 billion.
Devax Inc., a Lake Forest-based medical device maker, said Friday it plans to raise up to $85 million in an initial public offering. Devax is planning to list its stock on Nasdaq under the symbol “DEVX.” Devax didn’t disclose how many shares would be offered, nor did it provide an estimated price range for the offering, according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Bear Stearns & Co., Thomas Weisel Partners LLC, CIBC World Markets and A.G. Edwards & Sons are underwriting the deal. Devax, which develops stents coated with drugs to treat vascular disease, said it will use money from the offering to support continuing clinical trials and research and development activities, among other things.
Despite lower product sales from a year ago, Aliso Viejo drug maker Valeant Pharmaceuticals International swung to a first-quarter profit, thanks to cost cutting. Investors were unimpressed, sending its shares down more than 8% on the news last week. Valeant earned $8.6 million in the quarter, compared with a $5.8 million loss a year ago. Analysts expected Valeant to earn $4.7 million on revenue of $208.7 million in the quarter. Overall revenue was up 7% to $213.4 million, but product sales were down 2% to $176.9 million. The company attributed the decline to lower sales to Mexican wholesalers and lower sales of Infergen for the declines.
Santa Ana’s First American Corp. reported better than expected revenue in the first quarter, but warned that the slowdown in the housing market will continue to impact many of its largest business segments for the remainder of the year. The country’s second-largest title insurer reported net income of $83.8 million in the first quarter, a 24% increase from a year ago. Revenue rose to $2.1 billion in the first quarter of 2007, up 6% from $2 billion a year ago. Analysts were expecting quarterly revenues of about $2.03 billion. For the company’s dominant title insurance division, operating revenue declined 2% year over year to $1.4 billion.
