I suspect this is a positive action:
Friday June 29, 10:10 am Eastern Time
Press Release
SOURCE: New Brunswick Scientific Co., Inc.
New Brunswick Scientific Winds Down Fully Custom-Engineered Bioprocess Equipment Business
Announces Reduction in Force
EDISON, N.J., June 29 /PRNewswire/ -- New Brunswick Scientific Co., Inc. (NBS) (Nasdaq: NBSC - news), a designer, manufacturer and marketer of equipment and instrumentation for the life sciences, today announced that it will cease accepting orders for large fully custom-engineered bioprocess systems.
New Brunswick Scientific co-founder and Chairman David Freedman said, ``Custom-engineered products represent a very small niche business for us as designers and manufacturers of pilot and small-scale production fermentors and bioreactors, and represented less than seven percent of last year's revenues.
``NBS is, and will continue to be, a leading manufacturer of laboratory and pilot scale fermentors and bioreactors. We will continue to grow and expand our successful and broadbased product lines, as well as offer special modifications to equipment. In fact, we are planning to develop a new family of sterilizable in-place fermentors.''
The Company also announced that the wind down of the custom-engineered bioprocess business will result in a reduction in force at its equipment manufacturing facility in Edison, New Jersey. NBS will provide the affected employees with severance packages, which will result in a charge of approximately $200,000 in the second quarter ending June 30, 2001.
Mr. Freedman continued, ``The decision to initiate staff reductions was difficult. However, this area of our business simply was not meeting our internal profitability objectives. We move forward into the year's second half with well-established and successful core businesses as well as innovative new complementary products. This, together with recently streamlined operations clearly focused on profitability, reinforces our expectations for continued growth in both revenues and earnings versus last year.''
New Brunswick Scientific Co., Inc., designs and manufactures a wide variety of research equipment and scientific instruments for the life sciences and holds a minority equity position in DGI BioTechnologies, Inc., a drug-lead-discovery operation.
This press release includes statements that may constitute forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This information may involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected.
SOURCE: New Brunswick Scientific Co., Inc. |
