Another one bites the dust, hey hey, another one bites the dust ....
UPDATE 1-SFBC appoints new CEO, lowers outlook
Tue Jan 3, 2006 08:17 AM ET
(Updates throughout)
NEW YORK, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Drug services provider SFBC International Inc. (SFCC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday named a new management team after concerns about its testing practices and corporate governance caused it to hire investment bankers to review strategic options.
The company, which runs human trials on experimental drugs for pharmaceutical companies, also lowered its 2005 profit forecast again to account for severance of the departing executives.
SFBC said last month that its Quebec-based unit, Anapharm, was cooperating with Canadian officials reviewing an incident at a Montreal facility where a number of volunteers and staff were exposed to a study participant who had active tuberculosis.
Later the same month, the company also said that an employee who had behaved improperly had resigned.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that its board had appointed Jeffrey McMullen as chief executive officer to succeed Arnold Hantman, who is retiring. The board also accepted the resignation of Lisa Krinsky, who served as its president and chairman, it said.
The company said that it would record one-time severance charges of about $3.8 million against its fourth-quarter earnings and cut its non-GAAP earnings per share forecast for 2005 to between $1.71 and $1.76.
This is the second time in a month that the company has cut its 2005 outlook. Last month it cut its non-GAAP earnings per share forecast to between $1.88 and $1.93 versus an earlier forecast of $1.96 to $2.02 a share.
The negative rash of news caused Robert W. Baird & Co. to cut its rating of the stock to "neutral" from "outperform," and both UBS and Stanford Group cut their price targets for the company in December.
SFBC's stock closed at $16.01 on Friday and fell about 61 percent between Nov. 1 and Dec. 30.
yahoo.reuters.com |
