Business Briefs

Sunhawk.com to restructure, lay off 32

SEATTLE--Sunhawk.com announced yesterday a plan to restructure its operations, starting with 32 layoffs in its Music Store Division.

The Seattle company hopes the plan will keep it on track to turn a profit at the end of the first quarter 2002 and provide the resources for expanding the services provided by Copyright Control Services, which Sunhawk is acquiring. Sunhawk provides technology for the Internet that secures copyrighted proprietary products, such as digital sheet music.

In a release, Sunhawk.com Chief Financial Officer Tricia Parks-Holbrook said the company's layoffs are mirroring others in the industry as Internet companies realize they must become profitable.

Price set for Rosetta Inpharmatics IPO

SEATTLE--Kirkland-based Rosetta Inpharmatics plans to sell $100.8 million worth of stock in its long-awaited initial public offering.

The biotechnology company plans to sell 7.2 million shares at $14 a share. That's higher than the $10-to-$12 range it had been planning.

The company will trade under the ticker symbol RSTA on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Rosetta makes a high-speed, computerized system that analyzes genetic information.

Online children's-party

business cancels IPO

BELLEVUE--CelebrateExpress.com, an online children's-party-supply retailer in Kirkland, has canceled plans for an initial public offering because of unfavorable market conditions.

The company, formerly known as BirthdayExpress.com, has 250 employees in Kirkland and 50 more in Greensboro, N.C. It had sales of about $13 million in fiscal 1999, and it expected to raise $40 million through the public offering. The company is not profitable, but it expects to turn a profit soon, said Rebecca Burgess, a company spokeswoman.

CelebrateExpress.com was founded in 1994 by Jan and Mike Jewell, getting its start in the catalog business. In May, it signed a co-marketing agreement with Pillsbury on a national advertising campaign to start in September, and a deal to offer a $5 coupon for CelebrateExpress.com merchandise in more than 50 million boxes of Pillsbury's most popular cake-mix flavors.

Amazon executives

get $1 million bonuses

SEATTLE--Amazon.com, the largest Internet retailer, awarded $1 million in special bonuses each to two of its executives in May, saying they were playing an integral role as the company faced a challenging year.

Warren Jenson, chief financial officer, and Jeff Wilke, general manager of operations, were notified of the extra pay in letters from Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com chairman, president and chief executive. The letters were included as part of an Amazon.com regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Layoffs begin at Peterbilt plant in Tenn.

MADISON, Tenn. -- Top managers at Peterbilt Motors in Tennessee began laying off almost a fifth of their salaried workers Monday, less than a week after letting nearly a third of the hourly workers go.

Up to 60 managers and other professional workers will be affected by the heavy-truck plant's cuts, which officials say result from the declining big-rig market. On Friday, about 370 of the facility's 1,150 assembly-line employees were laid off and second-shift production was halted.

Peterbilt is a unit of Bellevue-based Paccar.

"The truck industry is still way down," said Joe Scattergood, plant manager. "We're just hoping this will stabilize us at this point in time."