ECONOMIC INDICATORS
Mixed: Orange County’s median home price edged down $2,000 in April from March to $430,000, but still stands $50,000 higher than prices here a year earlier, according to MDA DataQuick, a unit of Canada’s MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.
TOP STORIES
The county’s job market continued to improve in April, with employment growth from March, lessened losses from a year earlier and the unemployment rate back below 10%. Employers here added 4,700 workers in April from March, according to the state Employment Development Department. The county now has 1.36 million employed workers. The county’s unemployment rate was 9.5% in April, down from 10.1% in March and up from 8.2% a year earlier.
Irvine-based data management software company Vision Solutions Inc. is buying a Massachusetts maker of disaster recovery software in a deal valued at $242 million. Vision Solutions is acquiring Double-Take Software Inc., a publicly traded company that will go private in the buyout. Chicago private equity firm Thoma Bravo LLC, which owns Vision Solutions, is backing the deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter.
Aliso Viejo-based online retailer Buy.com Inc. is being acquired for $250 million by Japan’s Rakuten Inc. The move is part of a global expansion by Rakuten, Japan’s largest Internet company that runs an online mall and other sites. Buy.com sells electronics, DVDs, CDs and some 60 million other products. The company has yearly sales of about $500 million.
TECHNOLOGY
Lake Forest disk drive maker Western Digital Corp. is set to invest $1.2 billion in the next five years to expand manufacturing in Malaysia. The company plans to build a 1.5 million-square-foot building for making disk drive parts and for research and development.
Irvine’s Solarflare Communications Inc., one of the area’s best-funded chip startups, raised $20 million in additional venture funding. The company, which makes networking chips and circuit boards, raised the money as part of an ongoing $24 million funding round.
Irvine’s Netlist Inc., a maker of specialized memory products for computers, settled a lawsuit filed against Texas Instruments Inc. The company didn’t disclose terms of the settlement. Netlist sued Dallas-based Texas Instruments in 2008 for alleged trade secrets misappropriation.
HEALTHCARE
Lake Forest-based ReVision Optics Inc., a maker of replacement eye lenses, said in a regulatory filing that it received $35 million in venture funding. Backers include returning investors Domain Associates, a venture capital firm with offices in San Diego and Princeton, N.J., Canaan Partners of Menlo Park and Westport, Conn., and InterWest Partners, with offices in Menlo Park and Dallas. They were joined by new investor ProQuest Investments, which also has offices in New Jersey and San Diego.
REAL ESTATE
The Kaleidoscope Courtyards in Mission Viejo recently went into foreclosure and was taken over by an undisclosed lender. Garden Grove Galleria, a condominium and stores development in Garden Grove’s Korean enclave of Little Seoul, was put into receivership under San Diego-based Douglas Wilson Cos.
APPAREL
Anaheim-based mall clothing retailer Pacific Sunwear of California Inc. beat Wall Street expectations with results for its recently ended quarter but warned of a bigger-than-expected loss for the current one. The company, which is working on a long-running turnaround, forecast an adjusted loss of $14.5 million to $18.5 million for the three months through July. Wall Street analysts on average had been forecasting a loss of $11.2 million for the current three months.
DINING
Lake Forest-based Del Taco LLC has completed a refinancing of its major debt and emerged as a stand-alone company. The chain, originally part of Nashville-based Sagittarius Brands LLC, struck a $160 million loan and $39 million credit line led by San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. and General Electric Co.’s GE Capital. The refinancing frees Del Taco from Sagittarius Brands, which also had operated Nashville-based Captain D’s Seafood Kitchen and sold that chain to Florida’s Sun Capital Partners Inc.
The parent company of Costa Mesa-based Mexican fast food chain El Pollo Loco Inc. continued to see slumping sales in the recently ended quarter. For the three months through March, EPL Intermediate Inc. said sales fell nearly 4% from a year earlier to $68 million. A 7% drop in same-store sales, or sales at restaurants open for at least 15 months, drove the lower revenue, according to the company.
OTHER NEWS
Seal Beach-based solar panel maker Amonix Inc. plans to build a $20 million factory in the Las Vegas area. Amonix plans to employ about 280 workers at the plant, which is set to make photovoltaic solar panels, like those used to power satellites by converting sunlight into electricity. A specific site for the plant hasn’t been selected.
