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Tribune staff report | Deerfield-based restaurant company Cosi
Inc. said it lost $4.45 million in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 28,
2009, nearly halving its net loss from the same period a year ago.
Revenue
for the period dropped 8.1 percent to $28.24 million from $30,735,000
in the 2008 fourth quarter as company-owned net restaurant sales
declined and income from franchise fees and royalties declined because
the company lowered them between 2008 and 2009.
By Julie Wernau |
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC has told Old Republic International Corp.,
based in Chicago and among the nation’s 50 largest publicly held
insurance organizations, that it will no longer act as its accounting
firm after a dispute about the way the company chose to report income it
received, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange
Commission.
Old Republic disclosed that in the two most recent
fiscal years, the two companies have disagreed about how to report
income that came from mortgages that reinsurers backed out on and the
fees they paid Old Republic to leave the deal.
Ellen Gordon, president and COO of Tootsie Roll, in 1996. (AP Photo/Beth A. Keiser)
By Julie Wernau | The husband and wife team behind the Chicago-based Tootsie Roll brand received cash bonuses this year that more than doubled their base salaries. Melvin J. Gordon, chairman and CEO of Tootsie Roll Industries, received $4.15 million in total compensation in 2009, an increase over last year’s compensation of $3.3 million, according to a proxy statement filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission and his wife, Ellen R. Gordon, president and chief operating officer, received $4 million, an increase over last year’s compensation of $3.19 million.
| GAINERS | % | LOSERS | % | MOST ACTIVE | Vol (000) |
| Smurfit-Stone | +8.27 | Strategic Hotels | -6.24 | Motorola | 30,331 |
| Ulta Salon | +3.41 | A.M. Castle | -4.73 | Kraft | 14,827 |
| Brookdale | +3.19 | Huron Consulting | -4.01 | Caterpillar | 11,361 |
| USG Corp | +3.13 | Tootsie Roll | -3.38 | Walgreen | 9,932 |
| Walgreen | +2.63 | Rubicon | -0.56 | Abbott Labs | 8,510 |
See results from Chicago’s
Top 100 companies.
A shopper at the Walgreens on 250 S. Wacker Dr. in Chicago. (Scott Strazzant/Chicago Tribune, File)
| By Sandra M. Jones | Walgreen stores are about to get a new look as the drug store chain expands a test to make the stores more open, more colorful and easier to shop in.
The Deerfield-based company is adding more food and wine, expanding its beauty aisles, and preparing to add electronics this summer. The retailer is also lowering the heights of shelves and installing bigger and more colorful signs to help shoppers navigate the store. The new format, called customer centric retailing, is slated to roll out to 2,500 to 3,000 stores by this fall from 700 now, said Walgreens CEO and President Gregory Wasson in an earnings conference call Tuesday. |
See also • Walgreens profit up 4.6% on record sales
|
From BusinessWeek | McDonald’s sales in Latin America rose to $3.6 billion in 2009. The region accounts for about 16 percent of the Oak Brook-based corporation’s total revenue in dollars.
Get the full story: businessweek.com.
Tribune staff report | Walgreens said net earnings for the quarter ended Feb. 28 were $669 million, a 4.6 percent increase from $640 million in the same quarter a year ago. Second quarter sales up 3.1 percent to record $17 billion.
“During the quarter we continued to make progress in executing our key
strategies for growth,” said Walgreens President and CEO Greg Wasson. “We generated significant cash flow, despite the impact of a sluggish economy and lower-than-anticipated sales of flu-related products.”
(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
Associated Press | Palm Inc. reported sales figures on Thursday that showed it’s having a difficult time getting consumers to pay attention to its phones in a market dominated by iPhones and BlackBerrys. The company’s shares plunged in after-hours trading.
The company shipped 960,000 smart phones to stores and distributors in the quarter that ended Feb. 26, 23 percent more than in the previous quarter. However, the number of phones that were actually bought by consumers was 408,000, down 29 percent from the previous quarter.
By comparison, Apple sold 8.7 million iPhones in its most recent quarter.
| GAINERS | % | LOSERS | % | MOST ACTIVE | Vol (000) |
| General Growth | +3.79 | Smurfit-Stone | -4.11 | Motorola | 15,910 |
| Navistar | +2.50 | A.M. Castle | -3.29 | Abbott | 15,374 |
| Boeing | +2.15 | First Industrial | -2.94 | Smurfit-Stone | 13,500 |
| Illinois Tool Works | +1.97 | USG Corp. | -2.90 | Kraft | 10,767 |
| Discover Financial | +1.84 | Rubicon | -2.53 | Sara Lee | 10,508 |
See results from Chicago’s
Top 100 companies.
By Ameet Sachdev | The collapse of the auction-rate securities market burned NeoPharm Inc. of Lake Bluff.
The pharmaceutical company said it lost $735,000 in the fourth quarter of 2009 on an auction-rate securities put option. The one-time loss made up half of NeoPharm’s $1.5 million net loss in the quarter ended Dec. 31.
Dow Jones Newswires | AAR Corp.’s fiscal third-quarter profit dropped 42% as the commercial airline business remained weak, and the company was hurt by one customer’s bankruptcy.
Shares dropped 3.9%, to $24.65 in after-hours trading, as the aircraft leasing and maintenance company’s results fell far short of expectations. The stock has more than doubled from a four-year low about a year ago.
Chief Executive David Storch said the company saw a gradual increase in demand from commercial customers in late February that has continued.
(Warren Skalski/Chicago Tribune)
Associated Press | Discover Financial Services says ongoing loan losses led it to lose money in the first three months of the year and fall well short of analyst forecasts.
The company says it lost $104 million, or 22 cents per share, for the three months that ended Feb. 28. That compares with a profit of $120.4 million, or 25 cents per share, in the period a year earlier.
By Ameet Sachdev | Akorn Inc., a generic pharmaceutical company, said its fourth-quarter loss increased slightly from a year ago, as the company wound down its vaccine business.
The Lake Forest company reported a net loss of $2.5 million, or 3 cents a diluted share, compared with a loss of $1.9 million, or two cents a share, in the same period a year ago. Sales fell 30 percent to $18.1 million, from $26 million. Get the full story »
By Ameet Sachdev |
Illinois Tool Works Inc. touched up its outlook for the first quarter
because of increased production by global automotive manufacturers.
Glenview-based ITW said first-quarter earnings from continuing
operations are estimated to be 52 cents a share to 60 cents a share. The
quarter will end March 31. Its prior outlook called from profits
between 48 cents to 60 cents a share.
By Michael Oneal | Broadwind
Energy, a provider of windmill equipment and services based in
Naperville, reported a loss of $110.1 million for 2009 on
revenue of $197.8 million.
Much of the loss, came from a non-cash charge of $82.2 million for the
impairment of goodwill and other intangible assets, the company said in
a release. The charge stemmed largely from management’s reassessment of
how certain key customer contracts will perform over time, the
release said.
