CPAC Reduces Costs

At its annual shareholder’s meeting yesterday, CPAC, Inc. Executives detailed the success of its 1999 initiatives to reduce costs and increase earnings. President and Chief Executive Officer Thomas N. Hendrickson, told those in attendance, “Fiscal 2000’s performance and our just announced first quarter fiscal 2001 results demonstrate excellent progress in our initiatives undertaken in the last year to make CPAC a more profitable and a more competitive company. Most notably, earnings per share in the first quarter of fiscal 2001 increased 33% to $0.24 per diluted share.”

Mr. Hendrickson also commented on CPAC’s progress in its main area of focus for income improvement in the last year, Cleaning Technologies Group (CTG), CPAC’s commercial/janitorial cleaning division, part of its Fuller Brands segment. “Over the last year, we successfully completed a $2.5 million cost reduction program with significant savings coming from CTG. Our progress at addressing the issues at CTG was made clear with a major improvement in CTG’s contribution to CPAC’s first quarter results.”

Mr. Hendrickson recapped the Company’s progress and plans in its various business units. “In the Fuller Brands segment, we are pursuing an aggressive internet partnership strategy to drive new growth. We now have 15 Fuller Brands’ sites containing links from other high traffic sites. We are also close to launching an exciting new internet strategy through http://www.fullerdirect.com, which is a web based, affiliate fundraising program for recognized national charities. Toward the end of fiscal 2000, Fuller Brands’ Stanley Home Products was restructured as a separate business unit, and we look to resume its top-line growth through a strategy focused on new products and the Internet.”

Mr. Hendrickson concluded his remarks, “In the last year, we have taken significant steps to reduce overhead and also added strong leadership at the operations level. These actions have contributed to a significant increase in CPAC’s bottom-line profitability and we are now able to shift our primary focus to producing a higher level of top-line growth going forward.”