FALL RIVER – Quaker Fabric Corp. last week reported net sales of $101.9 million for the second quarter, a $17.3 million increase over next year, and a 36 percent increase in earnings per share of $0.26. The company’s net income was $4.5 million.
Results of operations for the first six months of fiscal year 2002 were net sales of $202.0 million, net income of $8.9 million, and diluted earnings per share of $0.53; compared to net sales of $164.5 million, net income of $6.2 million, and diluted earnings per share of $0.38 for the corresponding period of fiscal 2001. Basic earnings per share for the first six months of 2002 and 2001 were $0.56 and $0.39, respectively.
"We’re very pleased with the strength of the financial results we’ve achieved so far this year," said Quaker President and CEO Larry Liebenow. "Our record revenues and earnings reflect the competitive advantages we have worked hard to build in product design, customer service and technology. The breadth of our product line allows our customers to source most of their upholstery fabric needs from Quaker, from simple base fabrics to sophisticated high-end Jacquards."
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The company also reported a hike in export sales during the first half of the year of 10.5 percent.
"We are also continuing to reinvest in people, equipment, technology and systems to provide a strong platform for continued long-term growth and superior financial returns to our shareholders," Liebenow continued.
Face-scanning might need too much manpower
BOSTON – Facial-recognition systems, which use cameras to compare facial images against photos of known terrorists and criminals, may require too much human intervention to be practical for airports to use, a trial at Boston’s Logan International Airport found.
If applied at every checkpoint in an airport, the systems would require “a lot of manpower,’’ said Rich Roth, executive director of Counter Technology Inc., the Maryland-based security consultant that ran the 90-day test.
The staff required to run the equipment would depend on both the volume of traffic at a given airport and the level of security at which the system was run, Roth said. The systems can be adjusted to higher or lower levels of detection, with higher accuracy rates requiring more human involvement, he said.
“It’s not something that you set by itself and it automatically beeps a red light once in a while and tells you that there’s a bad guy,’’ Roth said in an interview. “You’d have to look to see whether or not the detection rate of this thing would be worth having this much manpower involved on a constant basis.’’
U.S. airports are expected to spend $100 billion on security in 2003 and makers
of face-recognition systems such as Viisage Technology Inc. and Identix Inc.
want a share of that market. The stock of Viisage has more than doubled and
Identix’s shares are up more than 40 percent since before the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks as airports in California, Massachusetts, Texas and Florida began testing
their systems. (Bloomberg News)
EMC turns to Compaq for tech director
HOPKINTON – EMC Corp., planning to shift its focus to software development, announced the appointment of two new executives. One, Mark Lewis, 40, comes from Hewlett Packard to be EMC’s technology officer. Before the merger of HP and Compaq, Lewis had led the latter company’s effort to compete with EMC in the data storage field. After the merger, according to the Boston Globe, Lewis’s role diminished. Along with his technology role, Lewis will be executive vice president of new ventures. Also appointed was David Goulden as executive vice president for marketing and business development. He comes from Getronics, based in the Netherlands, where he reportedly was chief operating officer for the Americas and parts of Asia. Under its new chief executive, Joseph Tucci, EMC has announced its intention to diversify into high margin software and services and away from the diminishing storage hardware market.
FleetBoston reorganizing commercial banking operation
BOSTON – FleetBoston announced, through an internal memo obtained by the Boston Globe, that it was realigning its commercial banking system into two principal units. One unit will focus on national corporate lending; the other will concentrate on regional small and medium sized firms, the Globe said. Rich Higginbotham will lead the national unit, with Norman heading up the regional section, the Globe said. The operation will be further reorganized into three other units, capital markets, cash management and niche businesses. James Mahoney, spokesman for FleetBoston, said, "We substantially downsized our large corporate portfolio, and we’re focusing on the areas where we have a competitive advantage of some kind."
The announcement preceded FleetBoston’s announcement that it was closing Robertson Stephens its San Francisco-based investment banking subsidiary. Fleet had announced the previous week that it was close to selling Robertson Stephen to a management group. On Friday, July 12, Fleet reported that those negotiations were unsuccessful and it was closing Robertson Stephens and discharging its approximately 950 employees.
Charrette to separate into two companies
WOBURN – Charrette Corp. announced that it spinning off its commercial division, which includes a catalog business, a retail Web site and the Charrette name to Jeffries Capital Partners, a private equity firm for an undisclosed amount. Charrette’s Spanish owner, Grupo Picking Pack, Inc., will retain the digital reprographics and document management services division, which it said eventually will be called Service Point USA, the Boston Globe reported.
(Compiled from news reports and releases.)
