Environmental Elements

Shares of Environmental Elements Corp. stock yesterday continued a roller-coaster ride that started when a Wall Street analyst decided Wednesday to slash his estimates of the Baltimore pollution-control company's likely fiscal 1992 earnings.The stock closed yesterday at $14.50 a share, up 75 cents, after trading as high as $15.75 a share. On Wednesday, the stock fell 4 points in the last half-hour of trading after Richard J. Sweetnam Jr., a Kidder, Peabody & Co. analyst, said that he believed the company would earn only 35 cents a share for the fiscal year that ends March 31, 1992.

Environmental Elements Corp., a nearly 60-year-old Baltimore company that produces air pollution-control equipment, has filed for bankruptcy and plans to sell its remaining operations. The company, in a statement, blamed the bankruptcy on increased competition and higher prices for steel and other raw materials. The bankruptcy filing follows a trend of downward sales and profits over the past three years. Sales plunged to $27.5 million in 2004 from $43.7 million in 2003 and $71.9 million in 2002, according to the company's most recent annual report for the fiscal year that ended in March 2004.

Despite disappointing earnings last year and a loss in its first fiscal quarter, Environmental Elements Corp. says it is confident that its business will grow substantially in the coming year as the 1995 Clean Air Act deadline approaches."

Environmental Elements Corp., a nearly 60-year-old Baltimore company that produces air pollution control equipment, has filed for bankruptcy and plans to sell its remaining operations. The company, in a statement, blamed the bankruptcy on increased competition and higher prices for steel and other raw materials. The bankruptcy filing follows a trend of downward sales and profits over the past three years. Sales plunged to $27.5 million in 2004 from $43.7 million in 2003 and $71.9 million in 2002, according to the company's most recent annual report for the fiscal year that ended in March 2004.

Environmental Elements Corp., the Baltimore-based maker of pollution control devices, reports that its fiscal third-quarter earnings increased eight-fold but were still short of projections.The company said earnings in the quarter ending Dec. 31 were $1.4 million, or 20 cents a share, on sales of $20.8 million, compared with $150,000, or 3 cents a share, on sales of $13 million for the third quarter 1989.Income from discontinued operations of $544,000, or 8 cents a share, reflects a previously reported sale of a joint ventureinterest.

Ralph J. Norris, a retired Environmental Elements draftsman and model maker, died of heart disease Saturday at his Cary, N.C., home. The former Perry Hall resident was 84. Born in Baltimore and raised on East Lafayette Avenue, he was a graduate of St. Paul's Parochial School and St. James the Less Commercial School. He studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art. During World War II he served in the Navy on shore patrol. After the war he co-founded a heating and air-conditioning business, which he operated briefly before joining the old Koppers Co. in Southwest Baltimore, where he worked drafting blueprints for its foundry work.

Environmental Elements Corp., a Baltimore air pollution control equipment maker hit by plunging sales, said yesterday that its top executive had departed and that 20 workers, or 13 percent of its work force, are being cut. John L. Sams resigned as the company's president, chief executive officer and board member effective immediately, the company announced in a statement. Chief Financial Officer Lawrence Rychlak was named interim president, the statement said. The statement said the company would take a charge of $140,000 in the current quarter for severance and other costs.

Environmental Elements Corp., a Baltimore-based maker of pollution-control equipment, is considering a sale or merger, the company announced yesterday. The company has hired Legg Mason Wood Walker Inc. as its financial adviser to assist the company's "evaluation of strategic alternatives," it said in a statement. No one at the company or Legg Mason was available for comment yesterday. Last month, Environmental Elements reported that profit fell 86 percent in its second quarter, which ended Sept.

After two years of losses, Environmental Elements Corp. reported its fourth-straight profitable quarter yesterday. The Baltimore-based maker of pollution-control equipment said it earned $341,000, or 5 cents a share, in its fiscal second quarter on sales of $18.65 million. That compares with a year-earlier loss of $5.97 million - or 84 cents a share - on sales of $12.2 million. "This is our fourth consecutive quarter of increasingly profitable results and evidences the overall growth of our business fueled by orders from both existing and new customers and by continued cost control and process improvement," said John L. Sams, Environmental's president and chief executive.

Environmental Elements Corp., the Baltimore-based maker of air pollution-control devices, said it has won its second contract as a result of new federal regulations tightening hazardous-emissions standards in the paper industry. The company said it won a $15 million contract from a North American pulp and paper company to do environmental cleanup work at four paper mills in the Southeast. Environment Elements officials didn't identify the client. It is the second contract the company has secured as a result of companies' needing to meet tougher standards for reducing hazardous air pollutant emissions.

Environmental Elements Corp. said yesterday that it ended its third quarter in the black - the first profitable quarter the company has had since the third period a year ago. The Baltimore-based maker of pollution-control devices had net income of $17,000 on sales of $14.8 million for the three months that ended Dec. 31. That compares with a profit of $85,000 on sales of $13.9 million in the year-ago period. The company also announced that its president, John L. Sams, will also hold the title of chief executive officer.

Environmental Elements Corp. reported yesterday that its net loss more than quadrupled in the second quarter, to $6 million. For the three months that ended Sept. 30, the Baltimore-based maker of pollution-control equipment lost 84 cents a share on sales of $12 million. That compares with a net loss of $1.3 million - or 18 cents a share - on sales of $13.5 million in the second period a year earlier. EEC President John L. Sams said the larger loss was the "result of looking at a lot of contracts that were sold in 1998 and 1999, and where they presently stood."