Harman Reports Fiscal Q1 Sales, Profit Increases

By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 10/21/2011

Stamford, Conn. - Harman International Industries reported higher net sales and net profits in its fiscal first quarter, ended Sept. 30.

Net sales for the first quarter were $1.051 million, an increase of 26 percent compared with the same period last year. Excluding foreign currency translation, net sales increased by 19 percent, Harman said.

Net income was $48 million, up from the prior year's $27 million. Operating income was $74 million, compared with $43 million in the same period last year.

During this quarter, all three of the company's divisions reported higher sales.

In the infotainment division, net sales were $603 million up from the prior year's $446 million. Operating income was $47 million, up from $8 million. Harman attributed higher sales to pent-up demand from the Japan tsunami and earthquake and continued growth in BRIC countries.

In its lifestyle division sales were up 19 percent to $300 million compared with last year due to the same factors in the infotainment division, but operating income was down $3 million to $26 million. Profits were down due to higher costs of neodymium magnets, Harman said.

In the professional division net sales were $148 million, up $8 million, while operating profit was down $6 million from the prior year's quarter to $19 million.

Dinesh C. Paliwal, chairman, president/CEO, said, "We are now in a new growth phase at Harman with strong footholds in each of the BRIC countries -- further diversifying and expanding our growth prospects. Our operational realignment will better enable us to focus and make measurable improvement on the profitability of our infotainment business and we are aggressively working on increasing our backlog of scalable systems. We are excited to have launched a global marketing campaign featuring some of the world's most prominent music artists to support penetration of our family of brands across our business lines."