Business news in brief

Airgas Inc., Radnor, acquired Pima Welding Supply Inc., an industrial-gas and welding-supply distributor in Tucson, Ariz. The purchase price was not disclosed. Airgas said Pima had sales of $5 million for the 12 months ended June 30. The deal was effective Jan. 1, and Pima became part of Airgas West, a regional Airgas company. The acquisition provides Airgas with an industrial cylinder fill plant that will improve service to Tucson customers.

- Reid Kanaley

The Judge Group, a staffing, technology consulting and training company, said it would open a branch office and lease 6,427 square feet of space on the 25th floor of the new Comcast Center June 1. The privately owned Judge Group has about 400 employees, including 100 at its headquarters in West Conshohocken. About 25 Judge Group employees will work at the Comcast Center.

- Linda Loyd

Urban Outfitters Inc. said its combined sales for November and December rose 28 percent from the same period in 2006 to $356 million. The Philadelphia specialty retailer said same-store sales increased 9 percent. Same-store sales, a key industry measure, are sales at outlets open at least a year. In the same two-month period in 2006, same-store sales fell 5 percent from the prior year. The company said same-store sales at all three of its chains rose in the period: up 16 percent at Anthropologie, up 17 percent at Free People, and up 5 percent at Urban Outfitters.

- Paul Schweizer

Rite Aid Corp., Camp Hill, said its same-store sales fell 0.5 percent in December from December 2006. The drugstore chain said its pharmacy sales were unchanged, and all other sales, such as food and cleaning products, were down 1.2 percent.

- Paul Schweizer

Drugmaker Merck & Co. Inc., Whitehouse Station, N.J., a major Montgomery County employer, said it was licensing an experimental drug for schizophrenia from drug developer Addex Pharmaceuticals in a deal that could bring the small Swiss company up to $702 million. The licensing deal is the second collaboration announced in just a month between the pharmaceutical company and Addex, a development-stage business that has been trying to create a class of drugs meant to subtly adjust faulty signals in the brain. The prior deal involved experimental drugs for treating Parkinson's disease and other disorders.

- AP

An outside advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration will review studies showing added risks of death and rapid tumor growth for cancer patients taking anemia drugs made by Amgen Inc. and Johnson & Johnson, the FDA said. The drugs are Aranesp and Epogen, by California-based Amgen, and Procrit, by Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, N.J. Aranesp is Amgen's top-selling product, with $4.1 billion in sales in 2006.

- Bloomberg News

Sun Bancorp Inc., Vineland, said it planned to write off $3.5 million in loans in the fourth quarter and boost its provision for loan losses by $4.1 million. The bank said $1.1 million of the bad debt was owed by one residential real estate developer. The provision will reduce Sun's earnings per share to 19 or 20 cents, the bank said. That is below the range forecast by analysts. On the Nasdaq, Sun's shares fell 6.3 percent, or 95 cents, yesterday to $14.20. In the third quarter, Sun had recorded net charge-offs of $999,000 and a provision for loan losses of $1.26 million.

- Harold Brubaker

Wuxi PharmaTech Inc., China's largest drug-research contractor, agreed to buy closely held AppTec Laboratory Services Inc. for about $151 million. The St. Paul, Minn., company has operations in South Philadelphia. AppTec is expected to have $70 million to $72 million in 2007 revenue with a compound annual growth rate of 46 percent, the companies said. The deal will give Shanghai-based Wuxi, which does research for nine of the world's 10 largest drugmakers, access to AppTec's expertise in making biotechnology-based drugs, Wuxi said.

- Bloomberg News

Chrysler L.L.C., the third-largest U.S. automaker, began a new round of job cuts to reduce costs by laying off 1,078 hourly workers at a St. Louis-area minivan factory. The employees will be offered buyouts and early retirement under a plan announced Nov. 1. Chrysler, which lost money in each of the last two years, is reducing its salaried and hourly workforce by 16 percent in the face of declining U.S. sales. The company expects to trim between 8,500 and 10,000 hourly jobs by the end of March. Terms of the incentive offers haven't been set.

- Bloomberg News

Tax preparers will have to obtain customer consent for offshore work under new Internal Revenue Service rules aimed at giving taxpayers greater control over private information. The final rules update regulations from 1974 - before electronic filing - that require tax professionals to get informed consent before disclosing tax information to third parties or using it for non-return purposes. The tax agency also said it was considering a ban on tax preparers using information to sell products such as refund anticipation loans, under which taxpayers, in exchange for instant refunds, have been hit with predatory interest rates.

- AP

Motorola Inc., the Illinois-based maker of mobile phones, plans to start selling a portable pocket-size television to bolster revenue as its handset sales decline. The device, which has a four-hour battery, can receive live TV signals and play saved programs and video clips on its 4.3-inch screen. It will be available this month from phone companies, broadcasters and retailers.

- Bloomberg News

A study conducted by the Rand Corp. for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission found most consumers don't understand the distinction between stockbrokers and investment advisers, which may undermine efforts to enforce separate rules for the two industries.

- Bloomberg News

Monsanto Co. reported that its first-quarter earnings nearly tripled to $256 million, or 46 cents a share, because of surprisingly strong pesticide and seed sales in Latin America. Revenue during the first quarter surged 36 percent to $2.1 billion, from $1.54 billion in the prior-year period. The results beat expectations on Wall Street, where analysts had predicted a profit of 35 cents a share on revenue of $1.87 billion, according to a poll by Thomson Financial.

- AP