Bloomfield, CT-based Kaman Corp. reported its 2018 first quarter fiscal results on Monday, which showed continued strong year-over-year (YoY) sales and profit growth for its distribution segment — Kaman Industrial Technologies (KIT).
Kaman Industrial Technologies posted first-quarter sales of $283.9 million, up 4.5 percent YoY and up 8.0 percent sequentially from Q4 2017. KIT's Q1 operating profit of $11.8 million grew 3.7 percent YoY. It's been a considerable turnaround at KIT, which in Q4 of 2017 had its first YoY in 10 quarters dating back to Q2 2015 — including declines of 5.9 percent, 2.6 percent and 2.5 percent in Q1, Q2 and Q3 of 2017, respectively.
"At Distribution, our efforts to improve sales trends showed progress as organic sales per sales day increased 4.5 percent over the prior year," Kaman president and CEO Neal Keating said. "As we normally experience, certain employee-related costs disproportionately impacted Distribution's first quarter results. In addition, we incurred costs associated with the onboarding of several new national accounts and we expect the benefit from these new customers to ramp up over the next three quarters."
Kaman's other business segment, Kaman Aerosystems, had Q1 sales of $179.4 million increased 9.2 percent YoY, while operating profit of $22.7 million increased 4.1 percent.
Overall, Kaman Corp.'s Q1 sales of $463.3 million increased 6.3 percent YoY.
"We are redeploying a portion of the benefit from tax reform to make additional investments in our business and our people," Keating said. "First, our outlook for capital expenditures of $35.0 million will allow us to improve our operations and expand production capacity. Second, we are investing in our people, by contributing an additional $10.0 million to our defined benefit pension plan and offering $2.6 million in one-time employee incentives."
