Business
Art's Way Manufacturing Announces First Quarter Fiscal 2019 Financial Results
ARMSTRONG, Iowa, April 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Art's Way Manufacturing Co., Inc. (Nasdaq: ARTW), a diversified, international manufacturer and distributor of
About this update from Art's-way Manufacturing Co., Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":" ARMSTRONG, Iowa, April 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Art's Way Manufacturing Co., Inc. (Nasdaq: ARTW), a diversified, international manufacturer and distributor of equipment serving agricultural, research and steel cutting needs, announces its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2019.\nSales: Our consolidated corporate sales for continuing operations for the three-month period ended February 28, 2019 were $4,124,000 compared to $5,366,000 during the same period in fiscal 2018, a decrease of $1,242,000, or 23.1%. The decrease in revenue is due to decreased demand across our grinder, manure spreader and OEM blower product lines and the liquidation of our Canadian subsidiary from our agricultural products segment. Some of the decreased demand is due to economic factors such as commodity prices and price increases that we implemented to our customers due to increased material costs, mainly steel. Also, in 2018 we sold off aged manure spreader inventory at decreased margins, which led to decreased sales of manure spreaders in 2019. We introduced new manure spreader models to our product line at the end of fiscal 2018 and have seen some early success with demand for this product in 2019. Our OEM blower sales are down as our OEM blower customer elected not to purchase any blowers from us in 2019 due to slow-moving inventory on their dealer lots related to poor agricultural market conditions. Our sales in the modular buildings segment were up 38.3% due to additional lease income from leased modular buildings that were put into service in fiscal 2018. Our modular building backlog is strong and includes a $8.4 million project that is scheduled to be completed entirely in 2019. We are continuing to quote an unprecedented amount of modular buildings for our business after the restructuring of our sales and management teams in 2018 and are excited for the potential of this segment in the years to come. Our sales in the tools segment are down 29.4% from the first quarter of fiscal 2018 due to the loss of a large volume customer at the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2018. Consolidated gross margin for the three-month period ended February 28, 2019 was 14.7% compared to 20.9% for the same period in fiscal 2018. Our decreased gross margin is attributable to less revenue available to cover fixed overhead from our agricultural product...