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.