Ict Group

ICT Group Inc., a Newtown-based call-center company, is being purchased by a Florida firm for $263 million in cash and stock. Sykes Enterprises Inc., of Tampa, which provides customer-management solutions to companies around the world in the communications, financial-services, health-care, technology, and leisure industries, said yesterday that it would pay $15.38 a share, a 46 percent increase over Monday's closing price of $10.55. ICT Group, which was founded in 1984, provides technical support and database marketing as well as e-mail management, data entry, collections, claims processing, and document management services.

With 5,500 employees working phones and PC terminals on three continents, ICT Group of Langhorne boasts the kind of numbers that investors notice: 20 percent annual sales growth, 50 percent profit growth, and a long and diverse list of financial, health and telecom clients. But this is the telemarketing and customer-service business - not exactly a Wall Street hot spot - and ICT's stock has languished almost since the company went public in 1996. With few institutional investors, and no big brokerages pushing the stock, shares closed Friday at $6.88, up 20 percent from last year's levels but still less than one-third of its 1996 high.

Amid allegations that it routinely cheated its workers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in wages, ICT Group Inc., a Bucks County telemarketing company, said yesterday that it would set aside $12.85 million to pay the potential claims. The claims rise out of a 1998 class-action lawsuit filed in West Virginia alleging that the company did not pay all the wages owed to 11,500 past and present employees of three ICT West Virginia call centers. "They used to shave pieces of employee time off the records," said David Hammer, the attorney who represents the plaintiffs.

Jitters over the effect of a national do-not-call list for telemarketers is already costing the industry. Telemarketing firm ICT Group Inc., of Newtown, said yesterday that it lost money in the second quarter and blamed it on the weak economy, unfavorable foreign-exchange rates, and the forthcoming "Do Not Call" restrictions. The company, which conducts telemarketing campaigns on behalf of clients that include the banking and telecommunications industries, said it expected to report April-to-June revenue of $70.5 million - not its earlier estimate of up to $78 million.

If you're thinking about starting a small business, or expanding the one you already operate, a small-business seminar sponsored by the Penn State Cooperative Extension for Bucks County might be just the thing you need to help with your planning. The four-part series, to be held at Neil A. Armstrong Junior High School, 475 Wistar Rd., Fairless Hills, will begin Oct. 26. The 2 1/2-hour sessions will focus on establishing, expanding or improving a small business, a part-time business, a home industry or a part-time farming operation.

Indoor air pollution and how it often results from common household items is the feature of a new exhibit, "The Comfort Zone," that opened recently at Neshaminy Mall, Route 1, Trevose. A detailed miniature house, diagraming the sources and types of indoor pollution, is featured at the display, which is located on a cart in the mall between Sears and the food court. Developed by Energy Concepts Inc., a heating, air-conditioning and home- comfort company in Bensalem, the display serves as an educational tool to inform people and to create awareness about the concerns associated with indoor pollution.

These days, Alexander Graham Bell's immortal words "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you" could be the slogan of telemarketing companies scrambling to fill seats with customer service agents. Indeed, there are more phone calls than people available to answer them, thanks to a tight labor market and the tremendous growth of telemarketing - or teleservice, as some companies call it. If you've ever picked up a ringing phone and found no one on the line, chances are it's from a call center that has computers dialing but too few people to handle the call volume.

The new national Do Not Call Registry for telemarketers is sure to please consumers who have felt harassed by nightly phone calls hawking anything from long-distance service to aluminum siding. But the companies that do the calling say their business is sure to suffer. Sales will fall, they say, and for some, job cuts are imminent. "Telemarketers aren't Martians. They're your neighbors - working mothers and students. It's very frustrating," said Stuart Discount, president and chief executive officer of Tele-Response Center Inc., a telemarketing company in Philadelphia.

The scheme worked like this: a manager of a Middletown telemarketing firm forced a janitor to overcharge the company for cleaning services and then give the manager the excess pay in a wad of cash each month. If the janitor did not play by these rules, James Edward McCarthy told him, he would lose his job. But after taking $17,900 during a 21-month period, McCarthy did not know the janitor had reported the scam and was wearing a police wire when he delivered a payment in September.

Investors had more questions than answers after A.C. Moore Arts & Crafts Inc. cut its earnings outlook in October for the second time in 2005. Shares in the retailer based in Berlin, Camden County, fell 24 percent in the fourth quarter. Even A.C. Moore's executives can't explain a sales slowdown that also hit rivals Michaels Stores Inc. and Jo-Ann Stores Inc. "If I could answer that question, I would be a genius," said Leslie H. Gordon, chief financial officer of A.C. Moore, which operates 105 stores in the eastern United States.

ICT Group Inc., a Newtown-based call-center company, is being purchased by a Florida firm for $263 million in cash and stock. Sykes Enterprises Inc., of Tampa, which provides customer-management solutions to companies around the world in the communications, financial-services, health-care, technology, and leisure industries, said yesterday that it would pay $15.38 a share, a 46 percent increase over Monday's closing price of $10.55. ICT Group, which was founded in 1984, provides technical support and database marketing as well as e-mail management, data entry, collections, claims processing, and document management services.

What makes a company valuable? In the stock markets, where software writers, oil refiners, toy-makers and bomb builders compete for the same investor dollars, it doesn't matter what you make, or even how much you sell; it's how much profit investors expect you're going to keep that determines share prices. Thirteen Philadelphia-area companies rank on the Standard & Poor's list of 500 big publicly traded corporations. The most valuable is Comcast Corp., the Philadelphia-based cable TV, Internet and phone company, which earned $2.5 billion on gross sales of $25 billion last year, and was worth $64 billion - based on the price Wall Street assigns to its shares - on the Nasdaq Stock Market at the start of November.

What makes a company valuable? In the stock markets, where software writers, oil refiners, toy-makers and bomb builders compete for the same investor dollars, it doesn't matter what you make, or even how much you sell; it's how much profit investors expect you're going to keep that determines share prices. Thirteen Philadelphia-area companies rank on the Standard & Poor's list of 500 big publicly traded corporations. The most valuable is Comcast Corp. , the Philadelphia-based cable TV, Internet and phone company, which earned $2.5 billion on gross sales of $25 billion last year, and was worth $64 billion - based on the price Wall Street assigns to its shares - on the Nasdaq Stock Market at the start of November.

Investors had more questions than answers after A.C. Moore Arts & Crafts Inc. cut its earnings outlook in October for the second time in 2005. Shares in the retailer based in Berlin, Camden County, fell 24 percent in the fourth quarter. Even A.C. Moore's executives can't explain a sales slowdown that also hit rivals Michaels Stores Inc. and Jo-Ann Stores Inc. "If I could answer that question, I would be a genius," said Leslie H. Gordon, chief financial officer of A.C. Moore, which operates 105 stores in the eastern United States.

Jitters over the effect of a national do-not-call list for telemarketers is already costing the industry. Telemarketing firm ICT Group Inc., of Newtown, said yesterday that it lost money in the second quarter and blamed it on the weak economy, unfavorable foreign-exchange rates, and the forthcoming "Do Not Call" restrictions. The company, which conducts telemarketing campaigns on behalf of clients that include the banking and telecommunications industries, said it expected to report April-to-June revenue of $70.5 million - not its earlier estimate of up to $78 million.

The new national Do Not Call Registry for telemarketers is sure to please consumers who have felt harassed by nightly phone calls hawking anything from long-distance service to aluminum siding. But the companies that do the calling say their business is sure to suffer. Sales will fall, they say, and for some, job cuts are imminent. "Telemarketers aren't Martians. They're your neighbors - working mothers and students. It's very frustrating," said Stuart Discount, president and chief executive officer of Tele-Response Center Inc., a telemarketing company in Philadelphia.

Amid allegations that it routinely cheated its workers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in wages, ICT Group Inc., a Bucks County telemarketing company, said yesterday that it would set aside $12.85 million to pay the potential claims. The claims rise out of a 1998 class-action lawsuit filed in West Virginia alleging that the company did not pay all the wages owed to 11,500 past and present employees of three ICT West Virginia call centers. "They used to shave pieces of employee time off the records," said David Hammer, the attorney who represents the plaintiffs.

When did telemarketing companies have to start worrying about terrorist bombs? You'd think they would be more scared about those "do-not-call" lists that are sweeping the nation. A blast in March killed more than 20 people at an airport in the southern Philippines. For most of his career, John Brennan, chief executive officer of ICT Group Inc., a telemarketing company with headquarters between two Bucks County farms, didn't have to worry about things like political chaos 12 time zones away.

The challenges facing nursing leaders was the topic of a three-week program attended by Gail Latimer, senior vice president and chief nursing executive at Holy Redeemer Health System, Huntingdon Valley. Latimer, of Lansdale, and 35 others from the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom participated in the Johnson & Johnson/Wharton Fellows Program in Management for Nurse Executives, which is in its 20th year. The seminar provides nursing leaders with business and management knowledge in the changing health-care climate.

With 5,500 employees working phones and PC terminals on three continents, ICT Group of Langhorne boasts the kind of numbers that investors notice: 20 percent annual sales growth, 50 percent profit growth, and a long and diverse list of financial, health and telecom clients. But this is the telemarketing and customer-service business - not exactly a Wall Street hot spot - and ICT's stock has languished almost since the company went public in 1996. With few institutional investors, and no big brokerages pushing the stock, shares closed Friday at $6.88, up 20 percent from last year's levels but still less than one-third of its 1996 high.