Missives were winging like missiles bwteen Archive Corp and Cipher Data Products Inc yesterday, but the upshot appeared to be that the fierce tape drive rivals were settling down to discuss Archive’s increasing its $7.50 a share offer to $8 a share; earlier, Cipher said it expected to report a net loss before any costs as a result of the Archive offer, in the range of about $11m to $12.5m or 75 cents to 85 cents a share, on sales of about $41.5m for its fiscal second quarter which ended on December 31; it lost $14.2m in its first quarter.
