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Business Wire
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Business New Haven
3/23/1998
By: Russell Stone
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Health Insurance
Rate Hite
NORWALK - Oxford Health Plans (NASDAQ: OXHP), in an effort to
put its fiscal house in order, proposed boosting rates on its health care policies in New York state by as much as 69
percent. Patients-rights advocates blasted the hikes, but Oxford claims to have
lost money on the policies. An Oxford spokesperson said 1997 losses were $20.5 million on 55,000 individual policies.
Capital for Alexion
NEW HAVEN - Alexion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALXN) annouced a private placement of 670,000 shares of common stock to raise $8.827 million. BB Biotech, an institutional investor, has provided Alexion with previous infusions of capital. Alexion CEO Leonard Bell sees “significant progress” in his company's research and efforts to move drug candidates through clinical trials, and anticipates that the BB Biotech placement will fund continuing research and development. Upon completion, the transaction will boost Alexion's cash position to approximately $45 million. On news of the placement, analysts at Cowen & Co. opened coverage on Alexion, rating its stock a strong buy.
New Path to
Regulatory Approval
NORWALK - United States Surgical Corp. (NYSE: USS) has agreed to terms with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration for a ground-breaking product development protocol (PDP). The newly-devised PDP lets biotech companies and the FDA negotiate terms ahead of time for the testing and data required to approve a particular treatment for general use. This saves the company time and money in the testing process, and gets new technologies to patients faster. U.S. Surgical will use the new protocol in trials for its En-Abl system to treat uterine bleeding.
Enlightened Acquisitions
ORANGE - Hubbell Inc. (NYSE: HUBa) has completed two acquisitions. Without disclosing terms, the company announced it had acquired Devine Lighting of Kansas City, Mo. Devine, which manufactures outdoor lighting fixtures, will function as a division of Hubbell Lighting, based in Virginia. Hubbell also purchased assets from Santa Rosa, Calif.'s Hybrinetics Inc. Those will be used in Hubbell's line of dimmer switches and motor controls sold through its Electrical Products
division.
Electricity Contract
BERLIN - Northeast Utilities (NYSE: NU) has won a $150 million contract to supply wholesale electric power to Norwood, Mass. The ten-year pact to serve Norwood's retail customer load will begin April 1. Sale of wholesale power brought in $330 million in revenues to Northeast Utilities last year.
Utilities Competition
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Branko Terzic, president and CEO of Yankee Energy System Inc. (NYSE: YES) offered his vision of the future of deregulated retail markets in natural gas. Using analogies, Terzic suggests there are parallels in today's telephone, rental car and credit card industries. Like telephone companies today, Terzic argues, “gas marketers will call homeowners when they are eating dinner to ask them to switch to their natural gas.” As when renting cars, consumers may have a choice between a higher fixed rate, or a potentially lower rate with extra charges for “mileage” - the amount of gas actually used. Since fixed costs are so high for local gas distributors, “the ideal pricing might consist of a fixed monthly rate per customer.” Finally, competitive natural gas markets will be in some ways like credit cards. Natural gas and consumer credit are both commodities - in each case, the actual product varies little from one seller to the next. As a result, “the marketing of one may indicate the shape of the future of the marketing of the other.”
Sports for the Disabled
HARTFORD - Hartford Life Inc. (NYSE: HLI) has announced a two-year agreement with Casey Martin for the golf pro to serve as its corporate spokesman. Martin, who won a court case under the Americans with Disabilities Act to use a golf cart in professional golf tournaments, will also raise funds to support sports for the disabled. Hartford Life will donate $100 for each birdie, $250 for each eagle and $1,000 for each hole-in-one Martin makes on the 1998 Nike Tour to such groups as Disabled Sports USA and the U.S. Association of Blind Athletes.
Who's Earning What
MIDDLEFIELD - Zygo Corp. (NASDAQ: ZIGO) announced sharply higher sales for the final quarter of 1997 of $27.3 million, a 31-percent increase over the previous year. Earnings did not rise quite as rapidly due to increasing research and development expenses and underutilization of capacity at the company's Colorado production facilities. Diluted per-share earnings grew from 26 to 30 cents for the last quarter of 1997, a 15-percent hike.
WALLINGFORD - Novametrix Medical Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: NMTX), by contrast, increased both revenues and income in its fiscal third quarter ending February 1. Revenues grew to $7.38 million from $7.26 million in the previous year, while a loss of $1.28 million (17 cents per share) became a $535,000 profit (six cents per share). Excluding a special write-off in the previous year, however, its third-quarter earnings would have been six cents per share and thus roughly equivalent to results for this year.
BRANFORD - Neurogen Corp. (NASDAQ: NRGN) reported a net loss in 1997 on flat revenues. 1996 earnings of $5.9 million dropped to a loss of $257,000, two cents per share, for 1997, while revenues fell slightly from $18.3 to $18.0 million. The shortfall was due primarily to a 41-percent increase in research and development expenses from $13.9 to $19.7 million. This climb in expenses was in turn a result of increasing hires of scientific staff to pursue the development of new drugs. Reserves of cash and securities fell from $95.1 million in 1996 to $84.1 million in 1997.
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