Hospitality
Newport Beach-based hotel sales and marketing company Preferred Hotel Group said it produced $420 million in reservations for member hotels in the first six months of the year, including 41 hotels added to its roster. Member hotels grew room nights 18% and bookings by 20% in the year-over-year period. The Business Journal estimates the company’s 2013 revenue at $70 million.
Manufacturing
Santa Ana-based storage server maker ProMax Systems bought Golden, Colo.-based Cache-A Corp., which makes portable storage and archiving devices for the media and entertainment industry. Terms of the deal were undisclosed. ProMax Chief Executive Jess Hartman said the companies’ work overlaps in video content creation and storage and that ProMax would immediately start to offer technical support to Cache-A customers and honor existing warranties and support contracts.
Media
Programming transmitter Eternal World Television Network will build a broadcast facility in Christ Cathedral’s Tower of Hope in Garden Grove in a partnership with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, the Orange County Register reported. Alabama-based EWTN is the biggest religious media network in the world, according to the report, and has wanted to establish a West Coast presence for a long time.
Restaurants
El Pollo Loco’s initial public offering started on a strong note with a price at the top of its range and a 52% jump by midday Friday. The Costa Mesa-based operator and franchiser of fast casual broiled chicken restaurants planned to raise $100 million to pay off debt. It has about $289 million in debt, according to its SEC filings for the IPO. El Pollo Loco offered 7.1 million shares at $15 each that were trading Friday above $22 for a market capitalization of about $655 million.
Services
Newport Beach-based BuildFire launched a website for companies to build apps and offer them on their own websites or through app stores. Apps can be built for Apple or Android operating systems, said co-founder Ian Blair. BuildFire can also set up its system as a “white label” offering for companies to build apps for clients under that agency’s name.
Technology
Irvine-based Newport Corp., which makes lasers and related equipment, acquired an Israeli company that specializes in fiber lasers. Financial details of the transaction for Tel Aviv-based V-Gen Ltd. were undisclosed. All of the company’s 50 employees will be retained, Newport Corp. told the Business Journal. V-Gen founder and chief executive Eran Inbar will report to Dave Allen, vice president and general manager of Newport Corp.’s Spectra-Physics Lasers Division in Santa Clara, which has about 350 employees.
Aliso Viejo-based chipmaker Microsemi Corp. acquired a company in Ireland that specializes in chip design geared for large-scale Ethernet operations. Financial details of the transaction for Cork, Ireland-based Mingoa Ltd. were not disclosed, indicating it was a smaller deal for Microsemi, a leader in energy-efficient and timing chips for the defense, aerospace, industrial and communications markets. The company is venture-backed by Enterprise Equity Venture Capital and Enterprise Ireland, both based in Dublin.
Former Orange County Great Park executives said in depositions given as part of a city of Irvine probe that consultants on the park project routinely overcharged for unnecessary work or work that had to be redone, according to the Orange County Register. The report said the executives indicated City Councilman and former chair of the park corporation’s board Larry Agran protected the consultants. Former park chief executives Mike Ellzey and Walter Kreutzen, former park Chief Financial Officer Colleen Clark, and former park Manager Marsha Burgess gave the testimony. The Register also reported that Agran and at least one of the consultants denied the allegations.
Other
Anaheim City Council voted 4-1 to sell as much as $300 million in bonds to fund a 200,000-square-foot addition to the Anaheim Convention Center. The project is scheduled to start in the fall and has a projected price tag of $190 million. It’s intended to bring in more and bigger events.
Stanton’s November ballot will include a measure to increase the city’s sales tax by 1 cent. The Placentia City Council voted down a proposal to raise the city’s sales tax by a half cent.
ECONOMIC INDICATORS
UP: The average asking rent at the biggest OC
apartment complexes in the first quarter, up 3.5% from a year earlier, to $1,729 per month, according to RealFacts.
UP: OC auto sales in the first half of the year, up 7.9% over the same period last year to 88,605 vehicles, according to Pennsylvania research firm Auto Outlook.
