Perma-Fix Environmental Services continued its streak of poor quarterly financial performances by reporting an operating loss of $2.1 million for the second quarter of 2014, the company announced yesterday. The company had high hopes in the beginning of the year for a profitable year, but the results of the last two quarters has hurt the companies chances of reaching profitability this year, Perma-Fix Chief Financial Officer Ben Naccarato said during the company’s earnings call. “We anticipate positive EBITA [for the rest of the year],” Naccarato said. “It might be a little bit light because of the significant losses of the first two quarters, but we think we will get pretty close to breaking even for the year. The second half of the year will be positive.” Revenue for the second quarter of 2014 was $12.7 million, compared to $22.8 million for the same period in 2013, and gross profit for the second quarter was $1.6 million, compared to $4 million for the second quarter of 2013.
The company anticipated that the second quarter would be the start of the rise to profitability after a worse-than-expected operating loss in the first quarter, but it appears delays in shipments have affected the results for the quarter. “Our second quarter results were affected, in part, by timing as certain large shipments expected before the end of June arrived in the first few weeks of July,” Perma-Fix Chairman and CEO Lou Centofanti said in a statement. “Although it has been a challenging fiscal environment in 2013 and the first half of 2014, we have seen a significant improvement heading into the third quarter of 2014, both within the Services and Treatment Segments.” He later added, “Within our Treatment Segment, we have seen a noticeable improvement heading into the third quarter of 2014 and our waste treatment backlog is improving. We are also receiving more complex waste streams, which should improve our margins in the second half of the year.”
Perma-Fix also announced the completion of the sale of its Series E Common Stock to non-U.S. persons in an offshore private placement for its subsidiary, Perma-Fix Medical S.A. Perma-Fix would receive $1.6 million in the deal while still maintaining 64 percent of the outstanding shares of the subsidiary. The company has been trying to raise capital for the subsidiary’s technology to produce Technetium-99m (Tc-99m) from Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) so it can finance its path through the proper European regulatory bodies. “We are pleased that our Polish subsidiary, Perma-Fix Medical S.A., has closed on an initial equity raise and is listed on the NewConnect Market of the Warsaw Stock Exchange,” Centofanti said. “The initial offering will provide us with required capital to continue the development of our isotope technology. We appreciate the strong support from European investors that participated in the transaction. As a result of this financing, we look forward to accelerating our plans to commercialize the medical isotope (Tc-99m) technology.”
