Tandon Suffers Loss of $20.3 Million in Quarter

Tandon Corp. reported a third-quarter loss of $20.3 million that stemmed primarily from the cost of introducing its brand-name personal computers in the United States and from problems at its now-closed disk-drive plant in San Jose.

The company, based in Chatsworth, had announced Aug. 1 that it would post a significant loss for the three-month period ended June 29. It lost $15 million in the same period of 1985. Quarterly revenue fell 16.8% to $51.8 million.

Executives at Tandon, which is shifting from primarily making computer memory equipment to becoming a major manufacturer of IBM-compatible personal computers, attributed more than $3 million of the quarterly loss to the expense of establishing a U.S. dealer network for its computers.

The bulk of the loss, however, came from a $14-million shortfall linked to problems at the company’s Microtek Storage plant in San Jose, which was shut earlier this month.

That loss included an $8.6-million charge to reflect the cost of closing the plant as well as the expense of consolidating some disk-drive manufacturing in Singapore.