Whirlpool recorded third-quarter sales slightly below Wall Street expectations but the appliance maker is planning for a post-election bump in business.
Whirlpool shares rose 3% in after hours trading.
Jim Peters, the company's chief financial and administrative officer, said elections are a well-known suppressor of big-ticket purchases.
"You're getting a barrage of messages constantly, everywhere you turn, and it tends to have a negative slant to it," he said. "You're either hearing about how bad off you are now or how bad you're going to be."
He said the company has found that regardless of an election's winner, consumers return to normal patterns after the vote.
Whirlpool had quarterly net sales of $4 billion, just beneath the $4.1 billion predicted by analysts polled by FactSet. That represented a 19% drop from the same period last year as the slow housing market kept potential appliance buyers on the sideline.
Profits beat expectations following job cuts and other cost-trimming measures taken earlier in the year. Whirlpool's third-quarter earnings came in at $3.43 a share, compared with the $3.20 analysts had forecast.
-- Asia was the quarter's strongest global market, buoyed by market share gains in India.
-- The small domestic appliances segment, which includes KitchenAid mixers and blenders, is typically a bright spot but saw declines in profits and sales. Peters attributed that to higher marketing costs and the possible delay of some orders until the holidays.
-- Whirlpool reaffirmed its full-year earnings outlook of $12 a share.
