Hill-Rom Reports First Quarter Revenue of $350 Million and Announces Further Actions to Address Challenging Economic E...( BATESVILLE Ind. Jan. 14 /- Hill-R...),Health

BATESVILLE, Ind., Jan. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Hill-Rom (NYSE: HRC) announced today revenue for the first fiscal quarter of $350 million, an increase of 2.6 percent versus the first quarter of fiscal 2008. North America capital sales, exclusive of Liko, declined 10.3 percent, reflecting the significant and rapid contraction in provider capital budgets. North America rental revenues increased nearly 5 percent, and International / Surgical revenue growth of 17.1 percent, including Liko, remained strong as anticipated (13.5 percent on a constant currency basis without Liko). Liko worldwide sales totaled $17.2 million during the quarter. Further financial information and perspectives on the outlook for the remainder of the year will be provided during the company's first quarter earnings report scheduled for February 5, 2009.

"The balance we have sought to build into our business helped us achieve a solid sales outcome for the quarter, in spite of the weakening we observed during the last half of the quarter," said Peter H. Soderberg, president & CEO. "As other firms and analysts have reported, we are seeing, and expect to continue to see, material reductions in capital spending by U.S. hospitals. While our therapy rental business is performing well and as anticipated, we are reacting to this softening environment by taking a number of actions to better balance our capacity with demand, as well as to continue to reduce the cost structure of our business. These additional actions are confined to the U.S., as we are not yet experiencing noticeable contractions in international provider capital budgets."

Among the additional actions being announced today to more aggressively manage the company's cost structure are: 1) Consolidation of certain manufacturing and selected back office operations; 2) Redeploym
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