Business Digest December 20, 2013

OPENINGS

Dean Hazelwood launched Mr. Handyman of East Boulder, Broomfield and Erie, a full-service home-repair franchise. Hazelwood spent more than 35 years in the restaurant, hotel and real estate industries. Service will be provided to the greater Boulder area, including the following communities: Boulder, Brighton, Broomfield, Dacono, Denver, Erie, Firestone, Frederick, Lafayette, Lochbuie, Longmont, Louisville, Niwot, Northglenn, Superior, Thornton and Westminster. For more information or to schedule a visit, visit www.mrhandyman.com or call 303-396-1000.

Mental Health Partners will open a drop-in help center in Lyons to aid residents who are coping with emotional distress related to the September flooding. The center at 329 Main St. will open Thursday, Dec. 12. The center is in a room at Ferg’s Inn, donated by owner Craig Ferguson. The Drop-in Help Center at Longmont’s First Evangelical Lutheran Church, 805 Third Ave., has closed. In addition to the new center in Lyons, Mental Health Partners has two others in operation: 1333 Iris Ave. in Boulder, with limited Spanish-language services at this location; and OUR Center, 303 Atwood St., Longmont, with English and Spanish-language services available. The hours for all drop-in centers are noon to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday. For more information call 720-415-9740.

BRIEFS

Boulder-based Alfalfa’s Market Inc. is raising $3 million to help pay for its new store in Louisville, which is slated to open late next spring, according to Barney Feinblum, vice president of the natural and organic products grocery store. So far, 30 existing Alfalfa’s investors have bought $1.05 million worth of common stock in the latest fundraising effort. Alfalfa’s is held by about 100 shareholders, most of whom live in Colorado. The company plans to wrap up the fundraising effort by the end of the year. The Alfalfa’s store in Louisville is under construction at 707 E. South Boulder Road, the site of a former Safeway grocery store. Louisville residents wooed Alfalfa’s executives by sending them cards with alfalfa seeds in them. The city of Louisville also offered the company a $1 million economic incentive package.

Boulder-based Main Street Power Co. Inc. in partnership with MS Solar Solutions Corp., an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Morgan Stanley, Mercury Solar, and the city of Bridgeport, Connecticut, completed rooftop solar arrays for two schools in Connecticut’s Bridgeport Public Schools district. The two preK-8 schools are Cesar A. Batalla and Blackham School, with solar arrays sized at 217 kilowatts and 90 kilowatts, respectively.

The state of Colorado will receive $63 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to support long-term disaster recovery efforts from damage caused by the September flood in areas with the greatest extent of “unmet need,” primarily in Boulder, Weld and Larimer counties. HUD soon will publish a notice that will regulate the use of the funds. The state of Colorado then will finalize disaster “action plans” describing how it intends to expend the money, and HUD will review them.

Broomfield-based Noodles & Co. (Nasdaq: NDLS) and some of its stockholders are offering 4,500,000 shares of Class A common stock at a price of $39.50 per share. Noodles expects to enter into an agreement to repurchase shares of Class A common stock from certain officers of the company in a private, nonunderwritten transaction. The price per share would be equal to the net proceeds per share that Noodles and the selling stockholders receive in the offering. Noodles will use the proceeds from the offering to fund the repurchase. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and UBS Securities LLC are acting as joint book-running managers and representatives of the underwriters for the offering. Jefferies LLC, BofA Merrill Lynch, Piper Jaffray & Co., Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc. and RBC Capital Markets, LLC are acting as book-running managers.

In recognition of the devastation caused by the September flood in Boulder County, AboutBoulder.com has pledged to support all businesses in the city of Lyons with free advertising in the form of online promotions.

Boulder-based biopharma Array BioPharma Inc. (Nasdaq: ARRY) plans to test a bone marrow cancer research drug on patients around the globe, after initial clinical results were positive for the drug. Array officials said they have talked to U.S. Food and Drug Administration representatives about getting approval for filanesib, the research drug used to treat multiple myeloma, or bone marrow cancer. Research drugs go through extensive testing that can take up to 10 years before receiving FDA approval for commercial sale in the United States.

Broomfield-based MicroBiome Therapeutics LLC raised $1.3 million to support its two ongoing clinical studies for the drug candidate NM504, which can be used to treat Type 2 diabetes.The drug research company plans to report results of the two clinical studies in 2014 before asking investors for more funds, according to a company press release. The exact amount and the timing of a new fundraising campaign were not disclosed. Current investor BVM Capital, an investment firm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, led the new funding round. MicroBiome Therapeutics also has a research office in New Orleans.

EARNINGS

Boulder-based Rally Software Development Corp. (NYSE: RALY) reported a loss of $5.8 million, or 24 cents per share, on revenue of $18.9 million for its third quarter that ended Oct. 31. Rally, a provider of cloud-based solutions for managing Agile software development, began trading shares on the New York Stock Exchange in April when it raised $96.6 million in its initial public offering. The $18.9 million in revenue was an increase compared with $14.7 million for the same quarter a year ago. The loss of $5.8 million was an increase compared with a loss of $2.8 million in the same quarter a year ago.

Broomfield-based Vail Resorts Inc. (NYSE: MTN) reported a net loss of $73.4 million for its fiscal first quarter that ended in October, but officials said early season snow at several of its 10 ski resorts helped drive strong season-pass sales. The ski resort management and real estate company said the loss for the quarter ended Oct. 31 was a 20 percent increase from the $60 million loss for the same quarter a year ago. The loss, which equated to $2.04 per diluted share, was attributed mostly to ski area acquisitions in the last year, according to a press statement. Those acquisitions included Afton Alps in Minnesota and Mount Brighton in Michigan. During the quarter, Vail Resorts also signed a contract to operate Canyons Resort ski area in Park City, Utah. Season-pass sales were up 13 percent for the number sold and up 16 percent in revenue compared to the same time period in 2012, according to the press statement. The season-pass sale increase is the largest it has been since the company’s Epic Pass program started in 2008, according to the press statement.

CONTRACTS

Broomfield-based Noodles & Co. (Nasdaq: NDLS), a casual restaurant chain with 372 locations across 29 states, has deployed Boulder-based LogRhythm Inc.’s Security Intelligence Platform to meet payment card industry data security standards, compliance requirements, which require very close monitoring and control over credit card information and auditing, to prove that such data is protected.

Broomfield-based MWH Global landed a five-year, $60 million contract to provide engineering services for the Coast Guard’s shore and off-shore facilities. MWH will provide various environmental engineering inspections, investigations, assessments, impact statements, cost estimates, design, construction and environmental management. Contract work will focus on facilities along the Great Lakes, inland rivers and oceans, as well as those in U.S. territories. This latest contract award marks an extension of the Coast Guard’s more than 15-year relationship with MWH.

GRANTS

The Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, a nonprofit organization based in Boulder that works to advance energy efficiency in the Southwest, will receive a $2.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The grant will be used to help regional businesses and communities reduce energy costs, improve efficiency, and strengthen energy resiliency and reliability through the use of combined heat and power, or CHP.

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