Chester County Business Daily News Briefs

Chester County business daily news briefs review yesterday’s business stories important to Chester County and beyond.

Chester County Library System’s (CCLS) Annual Report released last week included these staggering stats from library usage countywide in 2014:

• 1,979,664 Chester County residents visited one of CCLS 18 branches during 2014
• 284,900 residents used one of CCLS 259 public computers spread across the County
• CCLS staff fielded, and presumably answered, 197,476 reference questions
• CCLS.org was accessed by county residence 2 million times
• The Library’s 213,072 patrons took out 3,825,331 books, movies, CDs and reference materials.

Access or download a copy of the report here.

Endo Acquires Drug Portfolio From South African Pharma

Malvern-based Endo International (NASDAQ: ENDP), announced today the acquisition of a broad portfolio of branded and generic injectable and established products focused on pain, anti-infectives, cardiovascular and other specialty therapeutics areas from a subsidiary of Aspen Holdings, a leading publicly-traded South African company. Under the terms of the agreement, Aspen Holdings will receive a one-time payment of approximately $130 million subject to usual and customary closing adjustments.

The transaction is expected to meaningfully expand Endo’s presence in South Africa as well add a sizeable pipeline of products in various phases of development.

Endo expects the transaction to close in third quarter 2015 and to be immediately accretive to earnings.

Route 29 Turnpike Ramp Closed This Saturday

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission advises motorists exiting the Turnpike at the Route 29 All-Electronic Interchange on Saturday, May 16th, that the exit will be closed to all traffic entering the system from Route 29 and exiting the eastbound-westbound Turnpike from 7 AM until 7 PM. Additionally, the entrance to the Turnpike from Atwater Drive will be closed.

The closure will allow crews to perform preventative maintenance to the toll-collection equipment.  The alternate route for motorists to access State Route 29 (Morehall Road) and the area local roadways from the Turnpike is to exit westbound at the Downingtown Interchange and eastbound at the Valley Forge Interchange.

Fibrocell announces Quarterly Loss

Fibrocell Science, Inc. (Nasdaq:FCSC), an autologous cell and gene therapy company primarily developing treatments for rare and serious skin and connective tissue diseases headquartered in Exton, reported yesterday a basic and diluted net loss of $0.21 per share for the Quarter ending March 31, 2015. The loss compares to a basic and diluted net loss of $0.35 per share for the same period in 2014.

Total revenues for the first quarter of 2015 were $0.2 million compared to less than $0.1 million for the same period in 2014. The increase is related to collaboration revenue recognized in the current period relating to a research and development agreement that we have with an unrelated third party to investigate potential new non-pharmaceutical applications for our conditioned fibroblast media technology.

Fibrocell’s shares closed down 1.2% on lower than average trading Monday.

BioTelemetry Reports Loss On Hiher Than Expected Revenue

BioTelemetry Inc. (NASDAQ: BEAT) on reported a loss of $69,000 in its first quarter last week. The Malvern-based company said it had a loss of less than 1 cent on a per-share basis. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring costs, came to 6 cents per share. The heart monitoring device maker posted revenue of $43.4 million in the period. According to Yahoo Finance, BioTelemetry shares have fallen 20 percent since the beginning of the year. In the final minutes of trading on Wednesday, shares hit $7.99, a drop of roughly 8 percent in the last 12 months.

Frontline Professional Development Platform Wins Prestigious Award

Frontline Technologies, a leading provider of human resources software for K-12 education, announced Monday that the MyLearningPlan K-12 Enterprise Solution won an SIIA CODiE Award for the best K-12 enterprise solution.

Frontline Technologies recently acquired the MyLearningPlan solutions, an integrated professional growth system that includes online management systems that streamline management of needs assessments, professional development planning and training as well as performance evaluation and goal setting for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade educators and staff.

“We are honored that the MyLearningPlan tools were chosen for a CODiE award,” said Chief Strategy Officer Elizabeth Combs. “Our team has worked hard to build solutions that are flexible, easy to use and meet the needs of our customers, so we are thrilled and grateful to receive this recognition from our own industry peers.”

The MyLearning Plan K-12 Enterprise Solution was also a CODiE award winner in 2012, as well as a finalist in 2014.