Mount Airy, North Carolina-based wire producer Insteel Industries, Inc. announced that net earnings for its fiscal second quarter ended March 29, 2014 totaled $3.5 million, or $0.19 per share compared with $3.7 million, or $0.20 per diluted share in the same period a year ago. Net sales increased 10.3 percent to $91.4 million from $82.9 million in the prior year period. Shipments increased 12.8 percent year-over-year while average selling prices decreased 2.1 percent. On a sequential basis, shipments increased 2.0 percent from the first quarter of fiscal 2014 and average selling prices increased 2.8 percent.
Insteel's second-quarter results were favorably impacted by the increase in shipments, which was largely offset by lower spreads between selling prices and raw material costs and higher unit conversion costs relative to the same period a year ago. The previously reported fire that damaged a portion of the Company's Gallatin, Tennessee PC strand manufacturing facility on January 21, 2014 did not have a material impact on the results for the quarter. Capacity utilization for the quarter was 51 percent compared with 46 percent in the prior year quarter and 47 percent in the first quarter of fiscal 2014.
"As we move into the second half of the year, we expect to benefit from the usual seasonal factors, which could be amplified this year by pent-up demand resulting from the unusually severe winter weather we have experienced in many of our markets," commented H.O. Woltz III, Insteel's president and CEO. "We are also seeing continued improvement in private nonresidential construction, our primary demand driver, and a heightened degree of optimism that the slow growth recovery may be gaining momentum."