WESCO Profits Slide 49% in 2009 but CEO Engel Sees Some Early Signs of Market Improvement in 2010
It was a tough year for WESCO Distribution Inc., Pittsburgh, with 2009 consolidated net sales declining 24.3%, to $4.6 billion from $6.1 billion, and net profits declining 49%. Said John Engel, WESCO's CEO, "We successfully closed a very challenging year having taken quick and decisive actions resulting in operating cost reductions of $140 million. The economy appears to be in the bottoming process as we have experienced two consecutive quarters of stable sequential sales and margins. We are beginning to see signs of positive momentum in certain end markets with continued pressure in non-residential construction and utility. Overall, our 2009 performance was favorable compared to the last economic downturn and demonstrates the improvements made to our business." Pittsburgh Business Times
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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.