Adding to the Records

Well into 1967, U.S. corporate leaders are still adding up very handsome figures for 1966. Items:

> Pan Am, which was spared the 43-day machinists' strike, soared on full seats and heavy military charters. The strike did cost it a $12 million payment to rival TWA and the other four affected lines under a mutual aid pact, but profits nevertheless increased 61% to $84 million. Flying into 1967, Pan Am got a big boost last month when it finally won permission as the only nondomestic carrier to fly its international passengers across the U.S.

> Alcoa shrugged off the Administration's price-hike rollback of October 1965, came through 1966 with sales up 18%, profits up an astonishing 40%, to $106 million. Alcoa, the world's largest aluminum producer, last month led the industry to a modest price increase, which President John D. Harper insists is necessary to give the ebullient industry one thing it lacks: "a more adequate return on invested capital."

> General Motors had its second best year in history, even though its 1966 sales fell 6.8% behind 1965's record. Dollar sales eased only 2.4%, but profits, beset by higher costs, slumped 16% to $1.8 billion. Ford, too, felt the chill: profits down 12% to $621 million despite record sales. Looking ahead, G.M.'s board gave 1967 a vote of confidence last week, maintained the company's 85-c- quarterly stock dividend.

>Anaconda prospered on high world copper prices and swelling U.S. demand. Through a nearly strike-free year, the company's sales surged to ten figures ($1.2 billion) for the first time, while earnings swelled by 67% to $132 million. In the fourth quarter, profits rose 116% over the same period in 1965.

> U.S. Steel, which surprised Wall Street last fall by raising its dividend from 50-c- to 60-c-, was not being overconfident after all: even though the company's profits slipped 11% to $249 million for all of 1966, earnings rebounded 22% in the fourth quarter. "About what we expected," smiled Chairman Roger Blough, who saw the surge as a sign that the industry's major sales problem--the big steel inventories built up by its customers during 1965--had about run its course.

> Union Carbide, second only to Du Pont in chemicals, achieved its fifth straight record year, with profits up 2% to $231 million on sales of $2.2 billion, despite what Chairman Birny Mason Jr. called "adverse factors"--mostly strikes--which brought on a fourth-quarter squeeze. Mason's continuing expansion program is moving Carbide close to Du Pont, whose 1966 earnings fell 5% to $389 million.

>R. J. Reynolds, the No. 1 tobacco company, raised its 1966 earnings by 3.4% to a record $138 million--with a lot of help from sales of non-tobacco products (Hawaiian Punch juice, Chun King foods). Despite the health furor, there is plenty of fire in the company's smokes. Its Camels and Salems remained at the top of their markets, while Winston edged out American Tobacco's Pall Mall for the first time as the best-selling brand of any kind.

> Weyerhaeuser Co. ended its first year under the founder's great-grandson, President George H. Weyerhaeuser, 40, with sales up 15% to a record $838 million. The timber giant's earnings were down 4.4% to a second-best $79 million--chopped by the housing slump and suspension of the 7% investment tax credit, which cost the company $1.7 million in the last quarter.

> National Dairy Products' sales of its many famous brands (Kraft, Sealtest) rose 12% last year to $2.3 billion, securing the food processor's spot among the $2 billion-plus corporate elite. The company's president and new (since October) chief executive officer, Gordon Edwards, complained that though earnings reached a record $73 million, higher milk prices kept profit growth to only 5%.

-- Merrill Lynch, biggest U.S. brokerage house, really earned its Wall Street sobriquet, "The Thundering Herd," having charged through the turbulent 1966 market with profits up 40%, to $43 million on revenues of $287 million. President James Thomson said he was still "strongly opposed" to the higher commission rates that other brokers want--and he can afford to be. One big deal, Howard Hughes's $566 million sale of TWA stock, alone earned the Herd a $2,900,000 fee.

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