Hooker 1Q sales rise 5%
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, April 4, 2004
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Increased import business and an additional month of Bradington-Young shipments led to a 5% sales gain at Hooker Furniture in its first quarter ended Feb. 29, although higher expenses sent earnings falling 19.1%.
"We have solid momentum heading into the second quarter, with strong orders for both wood and upholstered furniture," said Paul Toms Jr., the company's chairman and CEO.
"This order position should provide excellent shipping opportunities in the second quarter," he said.
Sales of $78.2 million in latest quarter included $38.6 million in imported wood furniture.
Import sales were up 11% from the comparable period a year earlier, while shipments of U.S.-made wood products fell 11.9% to $27.3 million.
Bradington-Young, the upholstery producer Hooker acquired last year, contributed a full quarter of sales compared with two months a year earlier after the acquisition.
First-quarter net income of $4 million was down from $5 million a year ago.
Toms noted that operating profit margins were down from a year earlier, but said the company is poised to improve margins in the current quarter because of better capacity utilization in its U.S. wood and upholstery plants.
Margins in the first quarter suffered because of low utilization at wood factories, weather-related down time at Bradington-Young, and higher freight costs as a percentage of sales of wood imports.
Certain expenses also rose as a percentage of sales in the first quarter, including costs to support import sales, bad debt expense from several isolated credit issues, the cost of providing leather upholstery swatches to Bradington-Young's growing dealer base, and legal compliance expenses.
Toms said a greater flow of incoming import shipments in the current quarter will help Hooker fill orders and bring its backlog down.
He also expects upholstery sales to grow, and production costs to decline as a percentage of sales of U.S. wood products.
"Retail is continuing to recover," he said. "We expect net sales to increase 8% to 12% in the 2004 second quarter compared to last year's second quarter, as we expect to ship much of our imported product backlog and better capitalize on the brisk incoming order rate."
| • Hooker Furniture(a) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Owns Bradington-Young Earnings per share are fully diluted, and all figures in parentheses are loses or declines. | |||
| Quarter ended 2/29 | 2004 | 2003 | Change |
| (a) Includes the results of Bradington-Young from its Jan. 2, 2003 acquisition. |
|||
| Sales | $78,222,000 | $74,475,000 | 5.0% |
| Operating income | 6,840,000 | 8,501,000 | (19.5%) |
| Net income | 4,040,000 | 4,991,000 | (19.1%) |
| Earnings per share | 0.35 | 0.44 | (20.5%) |
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Hooker 2Q sales, earnings rise
Jul 7, 2006 -
Hooker 3Q sales jump 36.6%
Oct 5, 2003 -
Hooker 3Q profit falls 79.3%, sales down 2.3%
Oct 23, 2005 -
Hooker's profit jumps 20%
Jul 30, 2006 -
Hooker 2Q sales dip 3.1%; net income off 11.9%
Jul 17, 2005
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