Mohawk surges ahead

CALHOUN, GA — Building on the strength of last year's Dal-Tile acquisition, which put Mohawk Industries Inc. into the highly profitable hard flooring market, Mohawk drove its fourth-quarter profits up a heady 42.2 percent, to $84.2 million from $59.2 million.

Once again driven by the Dal-Tile deal, sales climbed higher by 34.3 percent, to $1.2 billion from $895.8 million last year.

Attesting to Mohawk's skills at rapidly and profitably assimilating the companies that it buys, the Dal-Tile acquisition, which took place in March, added about $0.12 to Mohawk per-share profits of $1.25 last year, accounting for roughly 15 percent of Mohawk's bottom line last year.

And that wasn't the only superlative that the quarter produced. With sales and margins both growing, operating profits jumped up by 66.9 percent, to $162.9 million from $97.6 million.

That strong performance generated for Mohawk an operating margin —operating profits measured as a percentage of sales — is virtually unheard of in the home textiles business — 13.5 percent, up from 10.9 percent a year ago. And return on sales — net income as a percentage of sales — also hit virtually unprecedented levels for a textiles producer — 7.0 percent vs. 6.6 percent a year ago.

Helping to fuel the earnings improvement, in addition to the stronger sales, Mohawk expanded its average gross margin by 390 basis points, or 3.9 percentage points, to 28.5 percent from 24.6 percent the preceding year. Gross margin dollars, a coefficient of stronger sales and wider margins, rocketed up by 55.8 percent, to $342.7 million from $220.0 million last year.

But acting as a partial offset, operating costs climbed higher as well, moving up by 120 basis points, to 14.9 percent from 13.7 percent, the result of Dal-Tile's higher cost structure.

Putting a modest dent in the bottom line, interest expense grew almost five-fold, by 363.8, to $26.6 million from $5.7 million last year, in part due to borrowings to finance the Dal-Tile acquisition. But also included in the interest expense, the company said, is a $10.7 million charge related to an interest-rate hedge on about $100 million principal amount of variable-rate debt.