LaBarge Sales and Earnings Increase Sharply -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LaBarge Inc. (St. Louis, MO) reported sharply higher sales and earnings for its fiscal 2002 second quarter and first half ended December 30. For the 2002 second quarter, net sales rose 17 percent to $31,495,000 from $26,923,000 for the year-ago period. Second-quarter net earnings rose 65 percent to $1,200,000 or $0.08 per diluted share, as compared with $726,000 or $0.05 per diluted share, for the 2001 second quarter. For the six months ended December 30, net sales rose 24 percent to $63,603,000 from $51,207,000 for the same period in 2001. Net earnings for the first six months of fiscal 2002 rose 64 percent to $2,235,000 or $0.15 per diluted share, as compared with $1,361,000 or $0.09 per diluted share for the fiscal 2001 first half. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) for the 2002 second quarter rose 12 percent to $2.9 million, as compared with $2.6 million for the year-ago period. The 2002 second-quarter gross margin was 21.2 percent as compared with 20.6 percent for the 2001 second quarter. Fiscal 2002 second-quarter selling and administrative expenses declined as a percentage of sales to 14.2 percent from 15.1 percent. Interest expense for the second quarter declined 40 percent to $336,000 as compared with $557,000 in the 2001 second quarter, reflecting reduced debt levels and lower interest rates. The company reported $15,650,000 in total debt at the end of the fiscal 2002 second quarter, down 10 percent from fiscal 2001 year end and down 26 percent from the comparable 2001 period. Stockholders' equity was $31,807,000 or $2.13 per basic share, up 7 percent and 17 percent, respectively, from the fiscal 2001 year end and 2001 second quarter. Consolidated backlog of unshipped orders at the end of the fiscal 2002 second quarter was $95.2 million, up slightly from the first quarter and up 5 percent from this time last year. Last year's second-quarter backlog included approximately $38 million of a $39-million contract from Northrop Grumman Corp. to produce electromechanical assemblies used in automated postal sorting equipment. "Both our Manufacturing Services Group and Network Technologies Group generated excellent year-over-year sales growth during the second quarter," said Craig LaBarge, CEO and president. "Sales in our manufacturing services business, which represented 97 percent of total fiscal 2002 second-quarter revenues, increased 15 percent from last year's second quarter due to higher sales to both defense and commercial customers," said LaBarge. "Our Network Technologies Group generated revenues of $842,000 in the 2002 second quarter, up significantly from $358,000 one year ago. Despite the weak economic conditions, we have made very good progress in broadening our customer base and building our backlog, primarily with customers in the defense, aerospace and airport security industries." ----- Original Message ----- From: [log in to unmask] To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 2:34 PM Subject: [TN] Laminate Blisters... Hi all! Got another strange one again (why me?). Ran 70 peices of a double-sided SMT assembly. The board is a 6-layer FR4 board. PTH is hand-soldered. Everything seemed to be going fine until the boards got to an inspector just prior to test. I get paged to look at some blisters she said she was seeing. I was pretty suprised because things were fine when they went through surface mount. I went to the inspector, and sure enough, this is what I saw. Go to: http://www.stevezeva.homestead.com They appear randomly at one of four plated mounting holes on the board, and it's on random sides of the boards too...and it only happened on 19-assemblies. I can't find out when it happened. These mounting holes are off away from anything that was hand soldered too... Funny thing is they look like blisters, but the laminate isn't displaced like you normally would see in a blister...to me, it's more like a sort of delamination. I didn't see anything like that during SMT processing, I mean you can't miss something like that. But if it were due to excessive heat, I would expect to see it on more assemblies. The same thing would apply if it were caused by absorbed moisture wouldn't it? I would expect to see the problem on more assemblies. The fabs are all the same date code by the way... Anybody ever see something like this before? -Steve Gregory-