General Automation to Unveil New Zebra Model
Struggling to overcome a five-year slide and searching for an infusion of capital, General Automation of Anaheim said Tuesday that it will unveil the largest and fastest model in its Zebra line of computers at the International Spectrum computer show starting March 24 in Las Vegas.
The new hardware, which can accommodate 128 terminals, is twice the size of the company’s current large-size computer and will allow the company to compete for bigger customers, such as the larger health care organizations, according to Chairman Leonard N. Mackenzie.
The new model, the sixth in the Zebra line, is aimed at providing “significantly better price-performance characteristics” than the major products of the Ultimate Corp. and the McDonnell Douglas Computer Systems Co., Rene Caron, vice president for marketing, said.
General Automation is banking on the Zebra line of small business computers to bring the company to regular profitability, Mackenzie said.
The firm posted a modest $31,000 quarterly profit for its second quarter, ended Feb. 1, but that was the result of extraordinary income of $279,000 from lease rebates on the company’s shrinking office space requirements. Without that income, the company would have had an operating loss of $248,000.
Mackenzie has said he expects the company to post an operating profit in the third quarter, but he declined to predict if fiscal 1986 would mark the company’s first profitable year since 1981. Losses in 1980 and from 1982 through 1985 totaled more than $41 million.
With orders for Zebra computers growing, Mackenzie said he believes a program designed to turn the company around appears to be working. The program called for General Automation to shed its money-losing computer parts manufacturing operations, which it did, and to focus exclusively on the Zebra line.
The company has hired the investment banking firm of Paine Webber Inc. to “examine all alternatives” for obtaining fresh capital. The company has repositioned itself for faster growth, Mackenzie said, and needs new capital for that growth.
