Idexx reports profits up 10% but cuts its growth outlook

Idexx Laboratories Inc., which makes diagnostic tests for livestock and poultry, and tests for milk and water safety, said second-quarter profits increased 10 percent but it cut its growth outlook for the year.

The company, based in Westbrook, Maine, said earnings totaled $51.3 million, or 91 cents a share, compared with $48.7 million, or 83 cents a share a year ago. Revenue increased to $335.6 million, up from $317.9 million.

Revenues in the pet sector rose to $278.3 million, up from $259.7 million a year ago. Idexx attributed the increase to growth in its instrument and consumables business and in its reference laboratory diagnostic and consulting services business.

For the full-year 2012, Idexx cut its outlook due to the unfavorable impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates. It now expects full-year earnings to be in the range of $3.05 to $3.10 a share, down from its previous guidance in the range of $3.07 to $3.12 a share.

Advocates plan national day of action on minimum wage

Three years after the last increase in the nation’s minimum wage, worker advocacy groups have launched a concerted effort to raise it from $7.25 an hour.

A national day of action has been set for Tuesday, with planners intending to call on corporations such as Walmart, McDonald’s and Yum! Brands to ask them to lift the wages of their lowest-paid workers.

“We need to put more money in the pockets of those workers who line the foundation of the economy,” said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project, one of the organizations pushing for the pay increase.

Owens and others involved in the wage campaign note that many corporations have recovered from the Great Recession and are recording record profits. Meanwhile, the real value of average hourly wages for all workers has fallen.

Opponents say raising the minimum wage will result in lost jobs.

For the nation’s lowest-paid workers, the purchasing power of the minimum wage now is 30 percent less than it was in 1968. If today’s minimum wage had kept pace with the value it had in 1968, adjusted for inflation, it would be more than $10 an hour.

Kleiner must fight bias suit in open court, judge rules

One of Silicon Valley’s oldest venture capital firms must fight a gender bias and retaliation lawsuit in open court, a judge ruled Friday.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn denied Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers’ request to move the lawsuit to arbitration.

Kahn said resolving work disputes through arbitration is not required under Ellen Pao’s contract.

Pao, a junior partner at the firm, filed the lawsuit on May 10.

Kleiner opened in 1972 and has made billions by investing early in the computer industry’s biggest names. Throughout its history, women have rarely secured top management spots.

Pao, a 42-year-old Harvard law grad, joined Kleiner in 2005 as a senior partner’s chief of staff. She said the firm fostered a culture that made it hard for women to advance at the same rate and pay as men.

— From news service reports