Milwaukee-based Rockwell Automation, Inc. saw earnings and revenue fall in the second quarter of fiscal 2016 as challenges in heavy industry end markets outweighed gains in consumer and automotive areas.
The company reported net income of $168 million for the quarter, down 18 percent. Earnings were down 15 percent to $1.28 per share.
Revenue for the quarter was $1.44 billion, down 7.1 percent from the previous year. The decline included a reduction of 3.5 percent because of foreign currency translation.
Keith Nosbusch, Rockwell chairman and chief executive officer, said organic sales were in line with the company’s expectations and said the oil and gas market in particular hampered any potential growth.
Rockwell is expecting its full year sales to be about $5.9 billion with organic sales down between 1.5 percent and 4.5 percent. The company also narrowed its guidance range for the full year to between $5.75 and $6.15 per share, but did not change the midpoint.
Nosbusch said stabilization in oil and commodity prices, combined with projections for modest improvement in industrial production contributed to the updated guidance.
Sales in the company’s architecture and software segment were down 6.6 percent to $629.5 million. The control products and solutions segment was down 7.5 percent to $810.8 million.
Geographically, sales were down 6.7 percent in the United States to $804.8 million. In the Middle East and Africa region sales were down 3.9 percent to $274.6 million, but were nearly flat with the effect of currency translation. The Asia Pacific region sales was down 10 percent to $179.4 million, including $10 million lost to currency translation. Latin America was off 9.5 percent to $105.3 million, but was actually up when excluding currency. Canada was off 11 percent to $76.2 million.
