Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Wednesday, April 2, 1997
Royal Kona Coffee Co. has arranged for its product to become the only gourmet coffee sold in DFS Group Ltd.'s duty free shops in Hawaii, Guam, Saipan, North America, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. Royal Kona Coffee
wins duty-free dealRoyal Kona, a wholly owned subsidiary of C. Brewer & Co., said it will supply DFS with a complete line of its Big Island coffee products with special packaging. Its Big Island factory can produce up to 21 million pounds of coffee a year, said Al Kam, Royal Kona president.
CUPERTINO, Calif. -- Apple Computer Inc. has a major new shareholder: Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal said he has purchased more than 5 percent of the beleaguered personal computer maker's shares, according to Bloomberg News. Saudi prince
takes 5% stake in AppleThe prince, one of the world's wealthiest men, said in a statement that he purchased the Apple shares "over the last several weeks for an aggregate investment of $115 million."
Apple shares, which have been trading near their 52-week low of $15.12, received a boost last week when Oracle Corp. Chief Executive Larry Ellison told a newspaper that he is soliciting comment via e-mail on whether he should make a bid for the company.
Al-Waleed said he "will monitor events closely" to see what steps are taken by Ellison. "I believe there is a serious potential for Apple to provide larger returns to its stockholders once again, as it did in the past."
ST. LOUIS -- Trans World Airlines Inc. expects its first-quarter loss to "significantly exceed" the loss it reported in the year-ago quarter, the company said in its 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. TWA says it expects
larger quarterly lossTWA lost $37.1 million, or 98 cents a share after preferred stock dividend payments, in the first quarter of 1996, according to Bloomberg News. Analysts had expect the airline to lose $1.61 a share in this year's first quarter, according to the mean estimate of three analysts surveyed by First Call.
The St. Louis-based airline's cash will fall significantly from the $181.6 million it had at the end of last year, the filing said.
GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Phar-Mor Inc. and ShopKo Stores Inc. said they scrapped the drugstore chain's proposed purchase of ShopKo, citing a drop in Phar-Mor's stock price. In other news . . .