Mount Airy, North Carolina-based wire producer Insteel Industries reported Thursday of a net loss of US$0.2 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2012 compared with a net loss of US$7.6 million in the first quarter of fiscal year 2011.
Fiscal Q1 net sales were up 62.1 percent to US$84.8 million, due to the inclusion of the Ivy Steel and Wire facilities for the entire quarter and above average selling prices. Shipments in Q1 also increased, rising 40.4 percent, and average selling prices climbed 15.5 percent. Sequentially, shipments decreased 13.8 percent from Q4 in 2011 to Q1 in 2012 and selling prices also decreased 0.7 percent. Insteel's capacity utilization for fiscal Q1 was 42 percent compared with 35 percent in Q1 of fiscal 2011 and 49 percent in Q4 of fiscal 2011.
Looking ahead to the rest of fiscal 2012, Insteel's president and CEO, H.O. Woltz III said, "Although demand in our construction end-markets appears to be stabilizing, we expect that business conditions will remain challenging until a more marked and sustained recovery commences in the labor market as well as in the overall economy. In the interim, we will remain focused on the operating fundamentals of our business and our ongoing process improvement initiatives."