Hit by a $22.7m loss for its fourth quarter to June 30, making a $25.1m deficit for the year, Bolt, Beranek & Newman Inc, Cambridge, Massachusetts is having to perform some drastic surgery, inter alia closing its 20-employee plant in Livingston, Scotland and consolidating certain facilities BBN Communications Corp. The company attributed the heavy losses to a drop in government sales, continuing difficulties with the contract for Japan Airlines and the costs of introducing the new TC2000 version of the parallel Butterfly computer. The company took an $11m loss because of cost overruns on the network for Japan Airlines – BBN said wryly that the $15m contract was supposed to produce a profit. The company’s hopes for returning to profitability now depend heavily on our ability to increase our net work sales at BBN Communications and to market the new TC2000 succ essfully; it has invested about $50m in developing the new machine.
