MSOCOW (MRC) -- Honeywell International Inc. first-quarter earnings rose 5.3% as sales rose across most of the industrial conglomerate's business segments, said The Wall Street Journal.
Citing first-quarter performance, as well as the overall favorable outlook for Honeywell's key end markets, the company boosted the lower end of its per-share earnings outlook for the year by five cents, and now expects a profit of USD5.40 to USD5.55 a share.
Still, Honeywell remains "cautiously optimistic on the macro environment, even with some nice momentum exiting the quarter" in the company's short- and long-cycle businesses driving organic sales growth acceleration as the year progresses, said Chief Executive Dave Cote.
While the global economic recovery has struggled to gain momentum, Honeywell and other major U.S. manufacturers have noticed some pockets of strength, with stronger results in Europe, higher orders in China and improvement in the sluggish U.S. economy.
As the soft economy slows revenue growth, Honeywell—a maker of aerospace, building control and safety products—has focused on boosting its margins to grow its profits. Honeywell has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to streamline the company, focusing largely on Europe.
Last month, the company said it is seeking to spend USD10 billion on strategic acquisitions that would contribute about USD5 billion to USD8 billion in sales over the next five years. The company also at that time said it expects to meet the targets in its previous five-year plan, which ends this year.
For the quarter ended March 31, Honeywell reported earnings of USD1.02 billion, or USD1.28 a share, up from USD966 million, or USD1.21 a share, a year earlier. Adjusted for an expected full-year tax rate at 26.5%, per-share earnings rose to USD1.28 from USD1.16. Total sales rose 3.8% to USD9.68 billion.
Sales at the automation and control-systems business, which serves the commercial-construction industry, rose 7.6% to USD4.07 billion. The aerospace unit's sales slipped 1.8% to USD2.86 billion.
Performance materials and technologies sales rose 2.2% to USD1.75 billion, while transportation systems sales rose 8.6% to USD993 million.
As MRC wrote earlier, OOO Kirishinefteorgsintez selected Honeywell to supply its experion process knowledge system (PKS) and advanced alarm manager system at the company"s refinery in Kirishi, in the Leningrad region of Russia.
Besides, as MRC informed earlier, last summer Honeywell's UOP has been selected by Russias Lukoil to provide technology to produce high-quality gasoline blending components, propylene and other petrochemicals at its facility in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. The suite of Honeywell's UOP technology will be used in a new integrated fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) complex, the second such complex to be licensed by Lukoil at the Nizhny Novgorod facility.The new units, expected to start up in 2015, will produce more than 1 million tpy of gasoline blending components and more than 170,000 tpy of propylene.
MRC