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To: paret who wrote (8942)	8/7/2002 2:28:40 PM
From: Bucky Katt	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 48461

Somebody has to 'mop' up all this Wall Street scum> Speaking of scummy, did anyone read the WSJ mega-stroy about the former TYC ceo today? Clorox 4th-Qtr Net Rises 79%, Sees Increase This Year From Mop & Bleach Sales (Update6) By Steve Matthews Oakland, California, Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Clorox Co.'s fourth-quarter earnings rose 79 percent as a new $25 mop boosted sales, and costs fell. Clorox, the largest U.S. household-bleach maker, said profit will increase at least 10 percent this year. Net income in the quarter ended June 30 rose to $145 million, or 63 cents a share, from $81 million, or 34 cents, a year earlier, the company said in a statement. Sales increased 3.1 percent to $1.14 billion. Clorox trimmed materials and manufacturing expenses by 4 percent and selling and administrative costs by 5 percent. Chief Executive Craig Sullivan has cut 585 jobs and used savings to market new products such as the ReadyMop. Rival Procter & Gamble Co., which also is boosting earnings by trimming costs, raised its profit forecast two days ago. ``Clorox is starting to deliver,'' said Keith Patriquin, an analyst at Loomis Sayles & Co., which manages $61 billion that includes Clorox shares. ``They have gotten the cost structure to where they want it to be.'' Earnings were higher than the net income of 54 cents to 56 cents a share Clorox forecast in June. Shares of Oakland, California-based Clorox, which also makes Glad trash bags and Hidden Valley salad dressings, rose $1.07 to $37.74 at 2:05 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They had fallen 7.3 percent this year. Clorox said it expects profit this quarter to be 50 cents to 52 cents, an 11 percent to 16 percent increase. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call was 49 cents. Sales in the quarter and the year will rise, the company said. `Downsized' Production The fourth-quarter sales gain trailed some analyst forecasts of a 4 percent increase. Household-products makers Clorox, Kimberly-Clark Corp. and Colgate-Palmolive Co. have benefited from reining in costs even as consumer spending has slowed this year. ``They have downsized their manufacturing base,'' said Neal Goldner, analyst with State Street Global Advisors, whose $770 billion in assets includes 5.5 million Clorox shares. The Standard & Poor's 500 Household Products Index has increased 5.2 percent this year, compared with a 25 percent decline for the Standard & Poor's 500. Gross margin, the percentage of sales left after paying production costs, widened by 4 percentage points to 44.4 percent of sales, Clorox said. In the past year, Sullivan has eliminated low-demand package sizes and sold smaller, less-profitable businesses. Sales Sales excluding divestitures rose 5 percent, Clorox said, lowered by 2 percentage points by sales of the Himolene industrial trash-can liner and Maxforce professional insecticide businesses. Sales of North American household products rose 4 percent, led by ReadyMop, which is competing with Procter & Gamble's Swiffer mop line. Specialty-product sales increased 5 percent, led by Hidden Valley dressings and Kingsford charcoal. Latin American household-product sales fell 5 percent, hurt by recessions and falling currencies. The Argentine peso has declined 72 percent against the dollar this year; the Brazilian real has fallen 25 percent. Excluding a 5 cent-a-share loss related to Clorox's business in Argentina, where a currency devaluation reduced the value of its assets, the company would have earned 68 cents in the fourth quarter, spokeswoman Kathryn Caulfield said. On that basis, profit was 7 cents more than the average estimate of analysts surveyed by First Call. Clorox said it earned 45 cents excluding certain costs in the year-ago quarter. Sales were $1.1 billion in that period. (Clorox began a conference call at 1:30 p.m. New York time to discuss the results at clorox.com.)