Dole’s 3rd-quarter loss
widens to $94.8 million

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Staff and wire reports

Westlake Village, Calif. >> Dole Food Co., the world's largest fruit and vegetable producer, said its third-quarter loss widened as restructuring costs increased.

The loss widened to $94.8 million, or $1.68 a share, from $7.4 million, or 13 cents, in the year-earlier period.

Sales fell 0.5 percent to $1.33 billion from $1.34 billion, Dole said in a statement.

The company said it couldn't improve its fresh-cut flower business after sales fell in recent quarters.

Dole also had costs of $103.1 million, or $1.83 a share, for divesting its Pascual Hermanos vegetable business in Spain, the planned sale of other businesses in Europe and reducing banana and flower production in Latin America, said Ken Kay, chief financial officer.

Dole is negotiating to sell its beverage business in Honduras before the year ends.

The sale will reduce 2002 earnings by 22 cents. Savings from this year's restructurings should counter most of the lost profit from the Honduran business, Dole said.

Shares of Westlake Village, Calif.-based Dole closed down 93 cents to $20 on the New York Stock Exchange.

They are up 22.1 percent this year and 69.1 percent over the past 52 weeks.

Excluding the restructuring costs, Dole earned $8.3 million, or 15 cents a share.

Excluding a $42.5 million gain from insurance proceeds and an $8.1 million gain on the sale of Dole's California and Arizona citrus businesses, it had a loss from operations of $1.3 million, or 2 cents a share, last year.

Dole was founded in Hawaii in 1851 and for nearly 150 years was one of the most prominent companies in the islands.

In recent years it has spun off or closed most of its Hawaii operations, but the company still owns 8,000 acres of land on Oahu where it grows fresh pineapple.

It stopped growing coffee, bananas and other crops on that land, citing the high costs of doing business in Hawaii.

The Dole name is still prominent in Hawaii, mostly in operations owned by Castle & Cooke Inc., a real estate company that used to be part of Dole but was spun off in 1993.

Dole Food Chairman David H. Murdock is now sole owner of Castle & Cooke, a major residential real estate developer in Hawaii and owner of almost all of the Island of Lanai.