SANTA MONICA, Calif., May 3, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Patient Safety Technologies, Inc. (AMEX:PST) provided an investor update to its shareholders concerning the Company's $1 million investment in Alacra, Inc., a privately held company based in New York.
"We have multiple legacy commitments and investments in businesses that are outside the patient safety industry, and we'll continue to seek various alternatives to maximize the value of our non-core assets on PST's balance sheet," said Chairman and CEO, Milton "Todd" Ault, III.
Alacra currently sells a range of web-based products that help customers find, package, present and analyze a robust collection of information. These include: Alacra Premium, the ability to search and retrieve content from Alacra's expansive content warehouse; Alacra Book, which seamlessly allows a customer to build a company, industry or country information or briefing book in PDF or word format from multiple sources in minutes. Alacra Solutions is an evolving area for the firm. Solutions range from Compliance, and Concordance (mapping of disparate data sets) to Board of Directors detail, Intranet and portal design, internal content integration and commercial site development.
Alacra's revenues have grown from $5.5m in 2000 to over $13m in 2004. Quarter 1 2005 was the first quarter of profitable operations for the company. For the last two years, the company has been in the Deloitte Fast 50 Growth Companies for the New York area.
"The market for business information is buoyant in 2005 and we look to leverage our strong content set and superior technology during the year," stated Alacra CEO, Steven Goldstein.
In June 1999, Alacra received $4 million in venture financing from Flatiron Partners and Chase Capital Partners. In April 2000, the company received an additional $11.5 million in venture capital from Flatiron Partners, Chase Capital Partners, BARRA, Franklin Capital and Permal Capital Management. In December 2002, the company received an additional $3.5 million in venture capital from Flatiron Partners, Chase Capital Partners, BARRA and Franklin Capital (currently Patient Safety Technologies). At present the company is not planning to raise any new money.
Alacra was founded in 1996 as an aggregator and reseller of business and financial data. The company focuses on creating workflow solutions for investment bankers, consultants, investment managers, lawyers and information professionals. To date, the company has licensed over 100 premium databases from many of the most prestigious financial and business content providers, as well as indexing 45,000 business relevant web sites. For more information, please go to www.alacra.com.
Patient Safety Technologies, Inc. ("PST") is a developer, manufacturer and content provider of patient safety products and services, working toward becoming the leader in the patient safety sector. Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, PST is assembling a world-class Advisory Board of leading patient safety experts. The company is concentrating on surgical safety to support its newly acquired subsidiary, SurgiCount Medical, Inc., a developer of patient safety devices. SurgiCount features the Safety-Sponge(tm) System, which allows for faster and more accurate counting of surgical sponges. For more information on Patient Safety Technologies, Inc., please contact the company directly at 310-752-1416, or by email at info@patientsafetytechnologies.com or www.patientsafetytechnologies.com.
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements" as defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can generally be identified as such because the context of the statement will include words such as Patient Safety Technologies "expects," "should," "believes," "anticipates" or words of similar import. Stockholders, potential investors and other readers are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are predictions based only on current information and expectations that are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause future events or results to differ materially from those set forth or implied by the forward-looking statements. Certain of those risks and uncertainties are discussed in the Patient Safety Technologies filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Patient Safety Technologies annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. These forward-looking statements are only made as of the date of this press release and Patient Safety Technologies does not undertake any obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.