Presstek working on accounting fixes

Presstek still showed material weakness in its accounting practices at the end of the first quarter, the company said in filing its quarterly report late Tuesday.

But the company is still working on fixing the procedures, according to the quarterly filing, which was less than a week overdue. The firm’s annual filing had been a month late, prompting a delisting warning from the Nasdaq stock exchange that was subsequently lifted.

That annual filing first referred to material weaknesses caused by the lack of enough experienced personnel to cope with significant and non-routine transactions and it outlined a number of steps to correct that.

The quarterly report outlines the same remedies – including replacing Moosa Moosa as chief financial officer with Jeffrey Cook in February – but said that the company’s “disclosure and controls and procedures were not effective” as of March 31, 2007, because of the aforementioned weaknesses.

However, that weakness did not prevent the company’s quarterly statement from fairly representing the company’s financial position, the company said.

The Hudson based-provider of printing equipment last week announced nearly a $1 million loss and the replacement of its CEO Edward Marino with Jeffrey Jacobson.

The quarterly filing, known as the 10Q, goes into some more detail about the loss, revealing that Presstek has some 6.5 million worth of inventories, primarily due to anticipated demand of its new digital printing products. Analog sales have suffered, as expected, since the firm’s analog line was discontinued. Last year, such operations pulled in $3.2 million in revenue. Last quarter, they brought in less than $195,000 in revenue. – BOB SANDERS