Conner Peripherals Inc put up its vice-chairman Bill Schroeder to address the Montgomery Securities Technology Conference, and his piece of encouraging – if frustrating news was that the company will have to put its customers on allocation for its disk drives until mid-1994: the San Jose company, which lost $372m after a restructuring charge in the third quarter, began to experience shortages of drives around the second week of October, Schroeder said, and customer demand said is very strong in all markets except Europe, where demand for personal computers has begun to slow; Schroeder would not say whether the company will return to profitability in the current quarter or in the first quarter of 1994, but noted that the allocation situation does tend to improve profitability; he said the company is looking to boost sales in 1994 as it adds a range of new high-capacity disk drives, including a 210Mb drive for the low end of the market – We will be in full swing with high volumes of product as we roll into 1994 – we believe we are now on a path to grow revenues.
