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ATLANTA – UP Media Group Inc., parent company of Circuits Assembly and Printed Circuit Design & Fab, announced today that online registration for Virtual PCB, the industry's first virtual trade show and conference for the PCB design, fabrication and assembly markets, will open on Dec. 7.

ITASCA, IL – ITW subsidiaries Kester and Speedline Technologies will co-demonstrate certain technologies during Productronica this week.

Kester will showcase the new Speedline printer, Momentum, while Speedline will feature certain Kester interconnecting materials.

The show takes place Nov. 13-16 at the Munich Trade Fair Center.

Kester materials featured in Speedline’s booth include EnviroMark 919G no-clean and 828 water-soluble pastes, K100LD alloy for wire and bar, TSF and flux in both lead-free and SnPb versions. Kester also is providing materials for Speedline’s demonstration room in Germany, and the companies will cooperate on product training.

NEWARK, NY – IEC Electronics Corp. announced revenue for the fourth quarter was $9.6 million, up 15.6% year-over-year.

Fourth-quarter net income was $296,000, down nearly 16% compared to the same period in 2006.

For 2007, IEC reported net income of $875,000, up 75% year-over-year. Revenue was $40.9 million, an increase of 44.7% compared to 2006.

CEO W. Barry Gilbert said, “The fourth quarter was negatively impacted by significant product design and test issues related to programs from two new customers, and by inefficiencies associated with the influx of recently hired employees. We estimate that the combined effect of these issues on the quarter’s results was approximately $1 million in sales and upwards of $300,000 in pretax earnings, which we hope to recover during the current fiscal year ... We expect the impact of design and test issues on quarterly performance to lessen as we assimilate the new customers’ products and experience revenue growth.

The military and industrial sectors, respectively, represent 36% and 33% of sales for fiscal 2007 compared with 23% and 25% of sales for fiscal 2006.

… we expect our sales to increase by more than 20% and earnings to increase by as much as 70% from fiscal 2007.”

HONG KONG – Surface Mount Technology (Holdings) LTD. reported second-quarter revenue of HK $758,436, up 7% year-over-year.

Year-to-date revenue, ended Sept. 30, was HK $1.58 million, up 11.5% compared to the same period in 2006.

Gross profit for the second quarter was HK $108,773, an increase of 4.7% year-over-year, while gross profit in the first half of the year was HK $214,599, up 3.9%, the company said.

SMT said the growth in gross profit is lower than revenue growth mainly as a result of higher cost of sales resulting from higher raw material prices, wages, energy cost and depreciation charges.

US $1 = HK $7.7851

TAIPEI, TAIWAN – Arima Computer reported it will sell its notebook and server-related businesses to EMS provider Flextronics for $192 million.

Flextronics will procure all stocks of Arima's subsidiaries in Japan, Texas and California, and the UK for an extra $59.5 million.

The transaction is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2008, Arima said.

Currently, Arima's clients, including HP and Dell, contribute around 330,000-350,000 units to notebook shipments each month, said the company.

Flextronics should expand the production capacity up to 500,000 units initially after the take over, while mass production will begin in the later half of 2008, Arima stated.

No other terms of the agreement were disclosed.