General Automation, whose energetic chairman Len Mackenzie pulled it back from the brink of oblivion three years ago, has been Picking itself up in fine style of late, but the Anaheim, California company is not quite out of the woods yet. It now says that following the introduction of two new Zebra computer systems during its second quarter to December 31, 1986, manufacturing of the new systems in production volumes was delayed until late November, and some Zebras that it hoped to trot out to customers in December were delayed for January shipment. As a result, second quarter sales will be lower than expected – although for the year as a whole, revenues are on target or slightly higher than expected. It’s a good news/bad news situation, says Mackenzie: The good news is that the Zebra 5820 and Zebra 3820 are being extremely well received; we shipped every system we could build after the manufacturing release, and we entered the third quarter with a significant Zebra demand. The bad news is that a number of systems we had hoped to ship in the second quarter will be shipped in the third quarter – lowering second quarter net below street expectations. The company also says it incurred significant legal and other expenses in preparing for acquisition of Parallel Computers.
