The Ottawa-based company, formerly a subsidiary of MDS Inc., had a US$7.5 million loss in the three months ended April 30, including discontinued operations, compared with US$89.8 milion a year before.
The company had shown a US$21.5 million profit in the first quarter ended Jan. 31 and nearly US$70 million of revenue.
Nordion said Tuesday it will continue to pay a dividend of 10 cents per share on July 5 to shareholders of record as of June 17.
Nordion's revenue, reported in U.S. currency, was $68.2 million, up 32 per cent from $51.8 million but down slightly from the fiscal first quarter.
The company was badly hurt by a prolonged shut-down of the government-owned NRU reactor in Chalk River, Ont., which supplied materials that are processed by Nordion and distributed around the world for use in medical imaging.
The reactor, owned by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., returned to service last August after being shut down for repairs in May 2009. During that period, most of Nordion's revenue came from its nuclear sterilization products.
AECL began another outage at the aging reactor last month after the second quarter ended. The reactor is scheduled to return to operation on June 17, after 33 days of maintenance and inspection work.
"Nordion made solid progress during the second quarter, advancing value-creating initiatives, and increasing the diversification of revenue across our product portfolio," stated Nordion CEO Steve West.
"We're very pleased with TheraSphere's growth and the reliable cash flow generation from our sterilization technologies business."
"On the medical isotopes front, we await the outcome of the planned National Research Universal (NRU) reactor inspection and anticipate being in a stronger competitive position following the restart," Mr. West said in a statement Tuesday.
Nordion had 11 cents per share of earnings from continuing operations, or $8.4 million. That compared with a year-earlier loss of $49 million from continuing operations.
Nordion's discontinued operations dragged it into the red in the second quarter. The loss from discontinued operations was $14.3 million, down from $40.8 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2010.
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