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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Fonar - Where is it going? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jonj who wrote (10676)	8/5/1998 12:36:00 AM
From: WebDrone	Respond to of 19354

Jonj- "PPM's [sic] are profitable..."? There is an article about this in the Wall Street Journal. It is a pay site, but I really find it useful. You can search, save articles, and you don't need to bundle them every Friday to put them on the curb! Here is the article from today on MedPartner's earnings. Consider buying a year's subscription- it's cheap and tax deductible. I hope they will forgive me for posting this article, i offer this sincere endorsement, fwiw. <The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- August 4, 1998 MedPartners Reports a Loss In Second Quarter on Charges Dow Jones Newswires Restructuring charges and other items caused physician practice management company MedPartners Inc. to report a second-quarter loss Tuesday. MedPartners started a restructuring after a merger with PhyCor Inc., another troubled PPM, was aborted earlier this year. And like PhyCor, which cut its earnings estimates for the year last week, MedPartners said results for this year and next year will fall below estimates. Even without the charges, operating income was sharply lower than the year-ago period for MedPartners, the nation's largest physician practice management firm. As a whole, the industry has been struggling and has generally fallen out of favor with investors and with the doctors they have tried to recruit in a failed bid to boost efficiency. For the quarter, MedPartners reported a loss of $23.6 million, or 12 cents a diluted share. That includes a pretax charge of $41 million for restructuring and a pretax loss of $2.5 million from the sale of certain international operations. Excluding the items, operating income at the Birmingham, Ala.-based company was $1.8 million, or one cent a share, just below the First Call estimate of two cents a share. In the year-ago period, MedPartners reported a loss of $73.4 million or 39 cents a diluted share. The figure included merger charges of $59.4 million and a $75.4 million loss from discontinued operations. Excluding the items, operating income in the previous second quarter was $50.2 million, or 27 cents a share. Revenue rose 12.3% to $1.75 billion. MedPartners said cash flow from operations for the latest second quarter was a positive $3.5 million, compared with first-quarter negative cash flow from operations of $56 million. The firm said it is encouraged by the positive performance of its operations outside of Southern California, and said its Southern California operations showed "meaningful" improvement near the end of the second quarter. In May, the company decided to cut about 1,000 of its 9,200 positions in that region, which suffered heavy losses. Doctors there agreed to take a 7% temporary pay cut until conditions improve. The company has blamed consolidation issues and overutilization of services in Southern California. The company said it expects earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, for Southern California to become positive during the fourth quarter. The company is still looking for a buyer for Team Health, a $700 million division that supplies doctors to emergency rooms. MedPartners also said it expects this year's earnings to come in between 10 cents and 14 cents a share and said next year's earnings should fall in the range of 50 cents to 60 cents a share. A First Call survey of 17 analysts estimates MedPartners will earn 21 cents a share in fiscal 1998 and 65 cents a share in fiscal 1999. Last year, the company reported a loss of $820.6 million, or $4.42 a share. Excluding items, the loss from continuing operations was $41 million, or 22 cents a share. Although PPMs were hailed as a way to help doctors negotiate better rates with health maintenance organizations, by and large they haven't lived up to their promise. Analysts have said that doctors tend to become less productive when they become employees rather than owners, and that PPMs may actually raise costs by adding a layer of bureaucracy between HMOs and patients. Although they have attracted about 7% of the nation's 600,000 doctors, PPMs have yet to prove that they reduce medical-practice expenses or enhance patient care. Another large PPM, FPA Medical Management Inc. of San Diego, recently filed for bankruptcy.> Web