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Cyanotech cuts loss
as sales increase

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Cyanotech Corp. said today that increased sales of its microalgae products helped it reduce its losses in the final quarter of its fiscal year.

The company had a loss of $161,000, or 2 cents a share, for the three months through March 31, an improvement from a loss of $765,000, or 6 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter.

Net sales in the latest quarter were $2.3 million, up 28 percent from $1.8 million in the 1999 quarter.

Gerald R. Cysewski, chairman, president and chief executive of the Kona-based company, said sales were up for its Spirulina food supplement and its astaxanthin products, which are sold as health-boosting food supplements and as pigment enhancers that add pink coloring to pond-raised salmon.

For its full fiscal year, Cyanotech had a net loss of $4.5 million, or 34 cents a share, compared with a loss of $2.6 million, or 21 cents a share, in the previous year. The 1999-2000 loss included a $2.8 million charge in the third quarter related to withdrawing from a marketing joint venture with a Norwegian business.

The company's net sales in the latest year were $7.4 million, up 10.4 percent from $6.7 million in the previous fiscal year.

Since the end of the latest fiscal year, Cyanotech announced it had refinanced its credit line of $1.6 million, creating instead a 10-year loan for $3.5 million at a more favorable interest rate. The company also raised $1.1 million by a private placement of corporate bonds.

Cysewski said Cyanotech, which makes a variety of products from microalgae grown in ponds on the Kona Coast, is operating at full capacity.