Inmont-Carrier merger ignored by Wall Street The acquisition of Inmont by Carrier Corp. moved a step closer to comple­tion last week when the Syracuse, N.Y.-based air conditioner manu­facturer purchased Esmark's 9.5% interest in Inmont (C&EN, Aug 15, page 5).

Carrier bought the 747,200 Inmont shares owned by Esmark for an initial payment of $28.25 per share. This price was a condition of Esmark's backing away from its offer for In­mont stock (C&EN, July 25, page 7). Esmark's return could go higher de­pending on when a final agreement is reached by all of the companies in­volved.

One needn't feel sorry for Esmark in its losing bid, however. The com­pany stands to make at least $8 mil­lion in pretax profits on its sale of Inmont shares, an Esmark spokes­man says.

Despite the intense bidding for Inmont over the past several months, Wall Street has remained peculiarly blasé about the company. One secu­rity analyst tells C&EN, "I went to see them a few years ago and was not impressed enough to follow them after that."

As a consequence of the lack of in­terest, Inmont stock has been tre­mendously undervalued. For the past three years it has sold at only about

Another fiber plant close The wave of plant closings in the U.S. synthetic fibers industry over the past year is still not finished. Although fi­bers have shown some new life this year with increased production and prices, this part of the chemical in­dustry is not yet in healthy shape.

The latest incidence of a company's giving up on a fiber product is Beaunit, which is bowing out of nylon 66. Beaunit plans to phase out nylon production and close its relatively small plant at Etowah, Tenn. The shutdown will result in about 525 employees' losing their jobs. Capacity at the plant is about 80 million lb per year, mainly nylon carpet staple.

Up to the last, Beaunit wanted to keep the nylon plant going. This op­eration survived the company's plant-trimming program when Beaunit was sold by El Paso Co. this spring (C&EN, April 11, page 11). However, a soft market and price drops have combined with a weak position in nylon intermediates to make Beaunit change its position.

The closing will cut Beaunit's total sales of about $200 million per year

8 C&EN Aug. 22, 1977

four to five times earnings. An im­proving earnings picture, but mainly the tender offer by Esmark, finally brought the stock price to 10 times earnings this year.

In spite of the Carrier offer of $32 per share for 1.25 million shares of Inmont stock, the stock market price continues to hover around $28 per share. Some analysts believe that the deal may not go through. Indeed, one arbitrageur says that a more defini­tive agreement will have to be reached before the stock price will move up toward the level of Carrier's bid. The sale of Esmark's interest helps, he says, but it is not enough. He is wait­ing for a final agreement.

Besides the higher offer by Carrier, a factor that helped to sweeten the deal for Inmont is that the present management will stay on. William R. Barrett Sr., president and chief ex­ecutive officer of Inmont, will con­tinue in that position after the com­pany becomes a Carrier subsidiary. His and other management positions were not guaranteed in the unfriendly takeover attempt by Esmark. Barrett also will become a director and exec­utive vice president of Carrier.

Among the few characteristics common to both Inmont and Carrier is the same level of profitability. In 1976, Inmont earned $20.1 million on sales of $534.3 million. In its fiscal year ending Oct. 1,1976, Carrier had sales of $1.1 billion. Its net income was $34.7 million. D

at Beaunit I about one fourth and the company's fiber sales more than half. All that remains of the company's former array of fiber operations is about 40 million lb-per-year capacity in rayon filament at Elizabethton, Tenn.

Of Beaunit's other fiber units, a, polyester and polypropylene fiber plant in Elizabethton was slated for disposal by the time of the company's separation from El Paso. At that time, Beaunit also decided to dispose of textile plants at Childersburg, Ala., and Winston-Salem, N.C.

The upshot is that Beaunit is now largely a producer of textiles instead of fibers. Under president Roger G. White, the company runs single-knit plants at Statesville and Hamilton, N.C, a spinning plant at Rocking­ham, N.C, and a spinning and yarn-dyeing plant at Clinton, N.C In ad­dition, the company has a warp-knit plant at Lowell, N.C. A separate subsidiary of Beaunit, Joseph Ban­croft & Sons, merchandises the Ban-Lon trademark and conducts outside testing in its own laboratory at Ra­leigh, N.C D

Bulb coating could lighten energy use A chemical film-coated light bulb that uses up to 60% less electricity than regular bulbs is being readied for market. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developer of the coating, and Duro-Test Corp. have concluded an exclusive licensing agreement permitting the New Jersey company to use the film coating in manufac­turing bulbs.

The film consists of a layer of silver sandwiched between layers of titani­um dioxide. Each layer is about 180 A thick. MIT scientists John C C Fan and Frank J. Bachner first developed the film to improve the insulating properties of window glass and for solar heating applications.

The film acts as a "window" to visible light, but reflects infrared. Used in light bulbs, it could conserve much of the heat energy lost during ordinary operation. This would, in turn, reduce the electricity needed to operate the lamp's filament at its optimum temperature, according to Dr. James D. Felske of MIT, main researcher on the bulb project.

The new bulbs, expected to be in production by 1979, will cost nearly eight times more than conventional bulbs. However, the coated bulbs are expected to last nearly three times longer and to consume less than half the power of conventional bulbs.

A major reason for the increased cost is the technical problem involved in applying the three-layer coating. According to Duro-Test vice presi­dent of engineering Luke Thorington, a method called sputtering will be used. Excited argon atoms collide with titanium dioxide molecules, driving them onto the bulb surface. A similar process is required for the silver and second titanium dioxide layers. Sputtering, which must be conducted in high-vacuum chambers, is not particularly suited for large-scale manufacturing processes.

Duro-Test has awarded MIT a contract to see whether sputtering methods can be adapted to spherical glass surfaces. So far, no actual bulbs have been made with the three-layer coating. However, Thorington says, mockup bulbs—made with totally reflecting films—have been used for estimating the energy savings in­volved.

Other coatings have been consid­ered, he adds, including a multilayer film that could be evaporated onto the glass surface. "But nothing du­plicates the three-layer coating," he concludes. "It seems unique, and sil­ver seems to be the only metal on the atomic chart that works." D