Dixie Group earnings up on weaker sales, misses earnings estimate

Friday, November 9, 2012

photo Pictured is a detail of one of the spools, or packages, of thread in the creeling area of the Dixie Group plant in Eton, Georgia.

The Dixie Group, Inc. boosted income from continuing operations in the third quarter despite a dip in sales from the same period a year ago.

The Chattanooga-based carpet maker said today it earned $269,00, or 2 cents per share, on continuing operations from sales of $65.8 million in the quarter. That was 1 cent per share below analysts' expectations for the quarter.

A year ago during the same time period, Dixie earned $22,000 on sales of $69.6 million. The company said net sales declined primarily due to a one-time sales promotion in the prior period.

In the first nine months of the year, Dixie lost $240,000 from continuing operations, or 2 cents per share, on sales of $195.2 million. A year ago during the same period, Dixie earned nearly $1.5 million, or 11 cents per share, on sales of $204.7 million.

When adjusting for the number of weeks in the two periods, net sales for the year-to-date were 2.4 percent below the same period of 2011.

"We continued our strong residential growth in the quarter with 6.5 increase in product sales, excluding a one-time promotional special in the prior year," DIxie Group CEO Dan Frierson said today in a statement. "Each of our residential brands had nice increases through the retail and design channels. The only area of decline was in our mass merchant category, due primarily to the non-repeating one-time promotion in 2011."

Dixie's residential product sales, including mass merchants, declined 2.9 percent relative to a slight growth for the industry. Commercial carpet sales during the period were hurt by a slow start to the quarter with a sales decline of 10.6 percent relative to the industry growth in the low-single digits.