Bolt Beranek & Newman Inc is one of those companies that is far too fascinated by the challenges of pushing back the barriers of technology ever to get really rich, but the gnomic Cambridge, Massachusetts company has put on a big growth spurt over the past three years, and is now set to grow further, albeit at the expense of profits. It is acquiring privately-held Network Switching Systems Inc, formed in 1983 to design and manufacture high capacity digital switches, and as the company is still in the development stage, Bolt Beranek will take the acquisition as a research and development cost, charging $18m to its fourth quarter figures to leave it with a loss for the year to June. It is also paying $10m to buy the partners out of its BBN RS/Expert Limited Partnership, and raising $31m via a private placing for a new Limited Partnership to develop a computer based on its Butterfly parallel processing architecture, offering investors in it warrants for 470,000 of its common shares.
