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Orthopedic-device maker Symmetry Medical Inc. reported Thursday that third-quarter revenue was down 20 percent compared with the same period in 2008, but thanks to cost-cutting and other savings, profits more than doubled.
Warsaw-based Symmetry reported revenue of $87.2 million for the three months ended Oct. 3, compared with $112.1 million for the three months ended Oct. 4, 2008.
Profits were $5.4 million, or 15 cents a share, for the third quarter. They were $2.5 million, or 7 cents a share, for the third quarter of 2008.
The company attributed the revenue dip to softening customer demand and unfavorable rates of exchange for some of its foreign operations.
Symmetry said in a statement that it anticipated a weakening market and undertook aggressive cost cutting.
Two attorneys and Wall Street professionals were among 14 people charged Thursday in a widening $53 million insider-trading case that has snared one of America’s richest men and apparently shown white-collar suspects to be using the cover-up tactics of drug dealers.
The actions raise to 20 the number of people who have been charged in the federal case first disclosed last month with the arrests of Galleon Group founder and hedge fund operator Raj Rajaratnam and five others.
At the time, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called the first arrests “a wake-up call for Wall Street.”
“Today the alarm bells have only grown louder,” he said at a news conference Thursday.
Kroger hopes to divert its downtown gas customers to a new location about a mile west.
The Cincinnati-based retailer’s fuel center at the corner of Spy Run Avenue and State Boulevard will close at 11 p.m. Wednesday and remain closed. A new gas station at the Scott’s Food & Pharmacy store on West State Boulevard will open at 6 a.m. the following day. It will be the first to carry the Scott’s banner.
Kroger spokesman John Elliott said the station will be staffed from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. But fuel is available at the 10 pumps to credit card customers 24 hours a day. The first 500 customers to buy fuel at the station after 8 a.m. on opening day will receive a 20-cent discount per gallon on up to 25 gallons.
Peoples Bancorp on Thursday reported fiscal 2009 earnings of $3.12 million, or $1.14 per diluted share, a 6 percent decrease from the $3.32 million, or $1.12 per share, posted for the previous 12 months.
The Auburn-based parent of Peoples Federal Savings Bank observes a fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. The company did not release fourth-quarter earnings.
President Maurice Winkler III described it as “a difficult yet successful year.”
General Motors Co. CEO Fritz Henderson said Thursday that the automaker could tap some of its $50 billion in U.S. government aid to help restructure GM’s European Opel unit.
The statement came as thousands of Opel workers walked off their jobs across Germany in protest of GM’s decision to abandon the unit’s sale to new owners.
