NEW YORK -- Dover Corp. last night said it discontinued seven businesses during its just-ended quarter, including five from Dover Technologies and one from Dover Electronics. The discontinued businesses include Universal Instruments, Hover-Davis, Vitronics Soltec and Alphasem.

DEK, the screen printer OEM, and Everett-Charles Technologies, the semiconductor and PCB test unit, and OK International were not among those companies put on the block.

In 2005, the five businesses had combined revenue of $580.2 million and earnings of $26.7 million. To-date this year the companies have joint earnings of $9.3 million on sales of $291.8 million.

Dover will also discontinue Mark Andy and Kurz-Kasch.

These seven businesses collectively generated an operating margin of 4.3% for the full year 2005 and 2.9% for 2006 year-to-date.

As a result of classifying these businesses as discontinued operations, Dover's overall margin from continuing operations in both the second quarter and year-to-date 2006 have improved by 120 basis points, and by 100 basis points in both of the comparable 2005 periods.

Assuming all businesses currently in discontinued operations are sold by the end of 2006, Dover anticipates after-tax proceeds in the range of $325 million.

In a statement on its Web site Vitronics said, "After a long evaluation process and as part of a wider restructuring plan, Dover Corporation has made a strategic decision to focus on other segments in their markets. As a result of this decision, Dover Corporation announced on July 25 2006 that it is planning to sell our great company Vitronics Soltec. While our company has achieved strong success over many years, Dover is rebalancing its portfolio to be less focused on capital equipment. Both Dover and Vitronics Soltec see this as an opportunity to align our strong company with an investor more focused in this area.

"As a valuable customer, we wanted you to know that we are proceeding with business as usual as Dover pursues potential buyers for Vitronics Soltec. We can assure you that there will be no impact for you, our distribution partners, our employees or any other aspect of our business."

John Hartner, president of DEK, told Circuits Assembly that "it's business as usual" for the printer maker.

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