By Michael Susin
Donaldson is forecasting an acceleration in sales for fiscal 2025 but slightly downgraded its sales outlook for the following fiscal year, after reporting better-than-expected earnings for the fourth quarter.
The filtration-products maker on Wednesday said it expects fiscal 2025 sales to grow 2% to 6% over fiscal 2024, which ended July 31, and adjusted earnings--a metric which strips out exceptional and other one-off items--of between $3.56 and $3.72 a share.
"For fiscal 2025, we expect to achieve another year of record sales and earnings as we execute on our longer-term strategic initiatives," Chairman, President and Chief Executive Tod Carpenter said.
For fiscal 2026, the company now expects sales to increase between 3% and 7%, down from a previous range of 4% to 8%, due to softer Life Sciences end-market conditions. Operating margin, however, is expected to be 15.8% to 16.6%, up from a prior range of 15.6% to 16.4%.
For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024, the company posted a profit of $109.7 million, or 90 cents a share, compared with a profit of $91.9 million, or 75 cents a share, a year earlier.
Stripping out restructuring charges and other one-time items, adjusted earnings came to 94 cents a share, beating analysts' estimates of 89 cents a share, according to FactSet.
Sales rose 6.4% to $935.4 million. However, analysts polled by FactSet had expected $942.8 million.
"In the fourth quarter we delivered an all-time high level of profitability through solid sales and robust margin expansion while continuing to invest for the future, capping off a record year for Donaldson," Carpenter added.
By segment, Life Sciences increased the most on a percentage basis at 20.7% due to due to volume growth in disk drive and food and beverage. The Mobile Solutions segment followed up with 6.1% growth, while Industrial Solutions increased 3.9%.
Write to Michael Susin at michael.susin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 28, 2024 06:26 ET (10:26 GMT)
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