Brake specialist WABCO has reported Q3 sales of $706 million, up 20 percent in local currencies from a year ago and up 30 percent on a U.S. GAAP basis, reflecting the industry’s strong global growth.
“The third quarter marked yet another period of consistently robust results as we generated significant sales growth of 20 percent in local currencies while continuing to deliver a superior level of incremental operating profit margin at 29 percent, thus continuing at near-record levels in profitability,” says Jacques Esculier, WABCO Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “Propelled by the global growth in our industry, our third quarter results mark how WABCO continues to demonstrate its ability to outperform the overall market, improve productivity and deliver high incremental profitability.”
“During Q3 2011, the commercial vehicle industry continued to develop strongly as Europe, North America and South America generated double-digit growth in production of trucks and buses. WABCO continued to outperform the overall market globally,” says Esculier. “In Q3 2011, China, India and Brazil still produced 58 percent of the world’s trucks and buses. WABCO further benefited from our well anchored position in these emerging markets where we successfully maintain an increasing level of adoption of WABCO technologies and systems, resulting in a higher value of WABCO content per vehicle.”
WABCO reported Q3 2011 performance operating income of $94.5 million, two thirds higher than $56.4 million a year ago, while operating income was $92.4 million on a U.S. GAAP basis, up from $54.8 million a year ago. The ratio of the increase in performance operating income in Q3 2011 and the 20 percent increase in sales represents an incremental operating margin of 29 percent, excluding the impact from foreign exchange translation.
WABCO also reported Q3 2011 performance net income of $81.9 million or $1.19 per diluted share, up from $47.1 million or $0.71 per diluted share a year ago, and Q3 2011 U.S. GAAP net income of $83.8 million or $1.22 per diluted share, up from $44.0 million or $0.66 per diluted share a year ago.
“Q3 2011 marks another quarter of superior results, showing how WABCO consistently and efficiently transforms strong global sales growth into robust profitability,” says Esculier. “WABCO delivered an operating margin of 13.4 percent on a performance basis, which ranks near our all-time record of 13.6 percent for performance operating margin that we achieved in the previous quarter. We also delivered Q3 2011 performance net income of $81.9 million, very close to WABCO’s record that we set last quarter.”
