Anixter International Inc., Glenview, Ill., had a solid first quarter and is cautiously optimistic about business conditions for the remainder of 2011. "The stronger-than-expected pace of this recovery not only fueled higher sales growth than we anticipated, but it also was strong enough to overcome the historical patterns that typically produce relatively flat sequential sales from the fourth quarter to the first quarter," said Robert Eck, president and CEO, in a press release announcing the company's 1Q financial results.
"In addition to the better-than-expected year-on-year sales increase of 19 percent, we also experienced a nearly six percent sequential increase in sales, which included $29.5 million of sales from our December 2010 acquisition of Clark Security Products. Consistent with the trends we have experienced in the last few quarters, higher copper prices added approximately $25.2 million or approximately two percent of revenues in the first quarter compared to the prior year quarter. The continued strengthening of foreign currencies also accounted for an additional $20.0 million or approximately two percent of revenues."
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Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.