Perma-Fix Environmental Services on Tuesday announced a steep acceleration in both operating and net loss for the first quarter of 2016.
Net loss attributable to common stockholders rose from $2.1 million ($0.18 per share) in first-quarter 2015 to $3.8 million ($0.33 per share) this year, while the operating loss jumped from $1.8 million to $3.6 million.
The trouble straddled both business segments of the Atlanta-based nuclear services and waste management specialist, CEO Louis Centofanti said in a press release. Overall revenue was down from $13.6 million to $10 million, year over year; that encompassed a fall from $9.7 million to $7.2 million in the treatment segment and a revenue drop from $3.9 million to $2.8 million for the services segment.
“As anticipated, we experienced top line weakness in both our operating segments. Additional funding provided late in the government budget had a short term negative impact on spending, as the site contractors required additional time to prioritize the increased spending,” Centofanti said. “Our Treatment Segment experienced delays of certain large waste treatment shipments, which we believe have been rescheduled to later in the second quarter and the second half of 2016, and new projects in our Services segments were also slow to begin. Based on our current sales pipeline and visibility on the remainder of 2016, we anticipate an increase in adjusted EBITDA for the full year of 2016 as compared to 2015. Due to the uncertainty of timing related to certain large projects, we plan to provide more detailed guidance later this year.”
The company’s majority-owned subsidiary, Perma-Fix Medical S.A., is making progress in development of a new method of manufacturing the medical isotope technetium-99, according to Centofanti. Research and development costs associated with Perma-Fix’s medical isotope project were up to $438,000 in first-quarter 2016 from $395,000 in the same period of 2015. ” We are in active discussions with a number of potential investors, strategic partners, distributors and customers, and look forward to providing additional updates in the very near future,” Centofanti said.
