Boise Cascade Suffers Loss

Weak market prices pushed Boise Cascade Corp. into the red this spring, but Chairman George Harad suggested today that the loss should not persist beyond the second quarter’s operations.

The Idaho-based wood products company reported a $17 million second quarter loss, or 55 cents a share. That compared to profit totaling $105.9 million, or $1.64 a share a year earlier.

Sales during both quarters were $1.3 billion, but the company pointed out that prices for paper, which accounts for half of Boise Cascade’s annual revenues, plunged 23 percent from the 2nd quarter of 1995 and over three-fifths of that loss came since this winter.

Harad predicted the loss this spring when first quarter profits dropped by more than half to just $25.5 million because of the weak paper market.