Kaypro Corp, with sales down 60% over the past year, is looking for outside finance to launch several new products it has developed, chairman and president Andrew Kay told the annual meeting of the Solana Beach, California company last week. Kay said that Kaypro would soon market a computer designed to compete on price with low-cost MS-DOS computers manufactured in Taiwan and plans to open a retail outlet on the site of its Solana Beach headquarters. Among the products ready for marketing is a laptop personal computer with a hard disk drive, a high performance desktop computer using the 80386, and a vocabulary improvement software program. By paying off its largest commercial lender, which Kaypro was able to do last month with proceeds from its sale and leaseback deal, Kay said the company had moved itself out from under a cloud and positioned itself for improved results. Our sales are starting to move up now, said Kay, and a number of dealers are starting to come back. Kay firmly slapped down one shareholder, who suggested Kaypro consider filing for bankruptcy protection, saying I would have to be a lot worse off before I would do that, he said. Kay added that his goal was to see Kaypro’s share price, now just 25 cents, back at the $10 flotation price by 1991.
