TS Industries Moving Headquarters to Utah

TS Industries, a Huntington Beach maker of insulation products, will move its corporate headquarters to Salt Lake City in a consolidation effort planned to cut overhead, company officials said Thursday.

After the move, which should be completed by year’s end, TS Industries’ Orange County holdings will be reduced to a one-employee warehouse in Yorba Linda, said Erik Wachmeister, managing director of corporate finance for Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co., which is TS Industries’ investment banking firm.

The company is moving to Salt Lake City because a substantial part of its operations are based there, Wachmeister said. Its Orange County headquarters is a 12-person office; most of those workers will move to Utah with the firm, Wachmeister said.

“They had had some problems in the past,” Wachmeister said of TS Industries. “This is really a way of improving the bottom line, eliminating the duplication of overhead that took place in the past.”

For fiscal 1986, the company had sales of $33.6 million and net income of $814,000, Wachmeister said. For fiscal 1987, sales increased to $68 million, but the company suffered a loss of $2.3 million.

In addition, the company stock fell from $34.50 to $2 in the quarter following the stock market crash last October. The stock is currently trading over the counter for $1.3125, Wachmeister said.

“We don’t anticipate a repeat of 1987,” he said. “There’s been a very significant turnaround, and we’re streamlining, which will significantly improve the bottom line.”

In addition, the company announced Thursday that it has paid off a $20-million obligation to Jay A. Smart Research Ltd. of Salt Lake City with 600,000 shares of TS Industries common stock.

TS Industries assumed the debt when it purchased Won-Door Corp. of Salt Lake City in October, 1986. Three months before the acquisition, Won-Door had purchased from Jay A. Smart all of the patents and technology it had previously been licensed to use.