Back on track; SeraCare Life Sciences is ready to thrive.

Byline: Lisa Eckelbecker

MILFORD - It took a little more than two years, a slate of new executives and three big investment funds to wrench a bankrupt and then-reorganized SeraCare Life Sciences Inc. around to the point it could simply trade on the Nasdaq stock market.

Yet amid all that, the biggest change at the company - which offers the biological materials and services that others use to create drugs, medical devices and tests - may have come in turning a collection of fractured businesses into one company, according to the executive who had led the company through its changes.

"There were great synergies in what SeraCare has to offer," said Susan L.N. Vogt, SeraCare president and chief executive. "But it really wasn't being offered."

SeraCare is now trying to offer its products and services in a better way, and the effort has brought the company to a consolidated administration, manufacturing and warehousing center off Birch Street. Over the coming weeks, laboratories and workers at a facility in West Bridgewater will complete a relocation to 60,000 square feet of space spread over three buildings in Milford.

Some signs of the old days remain. A few lab coats in Milford still bear patches from a previous business unit. But SeraCare has closed facilities in California and Pennsylvania, shed assets from its Genomics Collaborative business in Cambridge, focused on products it can manufacture itself and revamped its sales practices to try to interest customers in a wider range of SeraCare products and services.

The company, which lost nearly $13.2 million in 2007 and narrowed its first-quarter loss this year to $330,651, could become profitable sometime in 2009, said Chief Financial Officer Gregory A. Gould.

If SeraCare can keep its management team intact, build on its existing product lines and maintain spending on expenses such as sales and administration, he said, "it's going to make the growth fairly profitable for the company."

SeraCare Life Sciences was spun out of SeraCare Inc. in 2001. Based in Oceanside, Calif., it reported problems with its financial filings in 2005. The company's directors hired forensic accountants, ousted three top officers and the chairman, and then filed for bankruptcy reorganization protection in March 2006 after clashing with the company's lenders. Nasdaq delisted the company's stock.

A few months later, SeraCare named Ms. Vogt, a veteran of Billerica-based Millipore Corp., as the new president and chief executive.

The reorganization was sometimes bumpy. Investment groups led by hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners sought to reschedule the company's financing, which was to take SeraCare out of bankruptcy. (Harbinger also owns shares in the New York Times Co., the parent of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.) The investment groups ultimately won court approval to backstop a $20.2 million financing and named three members to SeraCare's five-person board of directors.

Since the reorganization, Ms. Vogt said, Harbinger has not been actively engaged in the management of SeraCare.

Harbinger owned 23.3 percent of the company's stock as of April 30, and the top five investors in the company owned nearly half of all shares, according to a SeraCare filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Today, SeraCare employs about 110 people in Maryland and another 140 in Massachusetts. SeraCare's stock resumed trading on the Nasdaq Capital Market on June 23 and closed yesterday at $5.19

Its products business, which accounted for about 70 percent of revenues in the first quarter, sells materials such as blood plasma and serum.

Some go into tests used by hospitals, laboratories, blood banks and diagnostics makers. Some materials act as a "control," a substance that is similar to a patient's sample but produces the same result every time a test is run.

The products business also sells materials such as reagents that are used in the production of drugs, devices and vaccines.

A separate services business that accounted for about 30 percent of first-quarter revenues banks biological materials in Maryland for customers and offers research services.

SeraCare's biggest customer is the National Institutes of Health, which hired SeraCare last year to manage disease study specimens for $23.7 million.

Other large customers are Abraxis Bioscience Inc. of Los Angeles, a developer of cancer treatments, and Roche Molecular Systems of Pleasanton, Calif., a maker of molecular-based tests.

Even during bankruptcy, SeraCare officials said, sales never dipped more than 5 percent because customers stuck with the company, Ms. Vogt said.

"We saw that interest and momentum really kick in once we came out, and that's reflected in the growth we've been able to generate since then," she said.

It's difficult to measure the market for SeraCare's business because it competes in different biotechnology categories, but one large competitor, Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. of Hercules, Calif., posted 2007 sales of $832.2 million in its clinical diagnostics segment, which includes controls.

SeraCare plans to introduce new products next year, and it is hoping to expand its market share in certain categories and international markets, Ms. Vogt told investors during a recent conference call.

"We believe there's a very real opportunity for near-term, double-digit revenue growth," she said.

ART: PHOTO

CUTLINE: Susan L.N. Vogt, SeraCare president and chief executive, with Chief Financial Officer Gregory A. Gould in front of a room where plasma is filtered and bottled.

PHOTOG: MICHELLE SHEPPARD