Sales in HWC's MRO business, and within the company's five growth initiatives -- emission controls, engineering and construction, industrials, LifeGuard and utility power generation --decreased from the prior year period. After adjusting for copper deflation, the company estimated its MRO business declined between 10% to 20%, while sales from its growth initiatives were essentially flat.
Said Chuck Sorrentino, president and CEO, "We continue to be faced with weakened industrial demand due to depressed economic conditions, but are pleased to have experienced a slight increase in sequential sales during the quarter. Operating expenses have now reached their lowest level since our IPO in 2006. In spite of the business conditions net income for the third quarter was up 21% sequentially. We continue to remain focused on market share gains and added approximately 50 new customers in the third quarter of 2009.”
About the Author
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.