Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Monday, May 19, 1997
C. Brewer Homes Inc. today reported a net loss of $2.7 million for its fiscal fourth quarter, reflecting lower asset values that cost the company $2.3 million. C. Brewer Homes has quarterly loss
The Wailuku-based home builder said the loss compares with a net loss of about $1 million for the three months ending March 31, 1996. On a per-share basis, it lost 33 cents, versus a loss of 12 cents in the year-earlier period.
For its fiscal year 1997, C. Brewer said it lost $2.9 million, or 36 cents a share, compared with a loss of $1.5 million, or 18 cents a share, for fiscal 1996.
The company attributed the weak quarter to the sluggish Hawaii economy, which had hampered local home sales. C. Brewer took about $2.3 million in special charges during its fiscal fourth quarter due to declining values of the company's housing projects.
Honolulu city government expects to save 71 percent on its new cellular phone contract with Honolulu Cellular. Honolulu Cellular
wins entire city contractLast year, the city spent about $200,000 on its 300 cellular phones, with service divided between Honolulu Cellular and GTE Mobilnet. To save money, the city asked the companies to come up with bids for all 300 phones. Honolulu Cellular's winning bid was a monthly $6 access fee per phone and a flat rate of 10 cents per minute.
GTE Mobilnet had no monthly fee, but would charge 45 cents a minute during peak hours and 20 cents a minute during nonpeak hours.
NEW YORK -- Major airlines boosted some domestic air fares by 3 percent over the weekend, even as most carriers held sales on summer travel. Airlines hike fares 3%
but keep discountsUAL Corp.'s United Airlines was the first to raise fares on seven-day and 21-day advance-purchase excursion fares late last week, said Tom Parsons, editor of Best Fares Discount Travel Magazine. Other airlines quickly followed.
Joe Hopkins, a spokesman for United Airlines, emphasized that the weekend's fare increase will have no effect on current fare sale prices. Jackie Pate, a spokeswoman for Delta Air Lines Inc., concurred.
Major airlines are running summer fare sales as well as special promotions for travel on Memorial Day weekend.
What the fare hike does, then, is raise the base from which the next round of sales will be discounted.
NEW YORK -- ITT Corp., still fighting a hostile takeover bid from Hilton Hotels Corp., is selling five hotels to FelCor Suites Hotels Inc. for $200 million but will continue to manage them for 20 years. ITT selling 5 hotels
as it fights Hilton bidITT said today that it had been in talks for more than a year with FelCor, an Irving, Texas-based real estate investment trust that ranks as the largest single owner of Embassy Suites hotels. The deal represents the birth of a long-term strategic alliance with FelCor, said ITT, which owns the Sheraton hotel chain and Caesars World casinos.
Hilton Hotels on Jan. 27 launched a $6.5 billion takeover bid for ITT, expressing interest in merging the two companies' hotel and gaming business.
Since then, ITT has been shedding assets not central to those businesses in an effort to drive up its stock price and fend off Hilton. The hotels being sold are: the Sheraton Gateway Hotel Atlanta Airport, in College Park, Ga.; the Sheraton Suites Galleria in Atlanta; the Sheraton Gateway Suites O'Hare Airport in Rosemont, Ill.; the Sheraton Crescent Hotel in Phoenix; and the Sheraton Park Central in Dallas.
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Oracle Corp. announced today it will buy Navio Communications Inc., a company formed by Netscape Communications Corp. last year to develop Internet software for consumer electronics products. In other news ...
Oracle plans to use Navio software to aid its effort to develop so-called network computers.